The Corn Exchange in Edinburgh was the setting for a dose of 90’s Americana as the Counting Crows ‘The Complete Sweets!’ rolled into town. It’s great to see more gigs on this of the country and the Corn Exchange is a good venue, blending the old with the new from it’s original construction in 1910
The venue was packed and incredibly hot as Counting Crows drummer Jim Borgios came out to introduce the opening act, James Maddock. Maddock has a good pedigree himself, and since releasing his first album in 1982 he’s played with the likes of Bruce Springsteen and this evening he performed with Counting Crows own David Immerglück on guitar/mandolin. His set was all acoustic and contained great emotion in the songs, with Maddock giving brief intro to each song that I liked. The only downside was that with it being acoustic, it wasn’t particularly loud, especially towards the sides and back of the venue, and with people constantly talking, it was difficult to enjoy the performance. I can’t understand why people will pay good money to go to a show and talk all the way through an artist’s set, if you want to do that, either go to the bar or stay in the house
The venue was rammed by the time that Counting Crows made a very low key entry to the stage before launching into the cheery opener ‘Spaceman in Tulsa’ from their latest album ‘Butter Miracle, the Complete Sweets!’ and immediately vocalist Adam Duritz immediately has the crowd on side as he begins to control the crowd like puppets.
Their most famous song to the occasional listener is ‘Mr Jones’ and most bands normally save their most famous songs to the encore, but no, not Counting Crows who slip this banger in as the third song of the set and the crowd sing the chorus with such gusto that you think that the roof is going to come off the place.
You can tell the band have a great connection with their audiences and Duritz keeps the crowd entertained between songs with little quips & stories that they lap up.
The great thing here is that they still manage to deliver a career spanning setlist despite relying heavily on their debut ‘August and Everything After’ album providing six songs and their new album that yields five.
The acoustics of the venue are really good and the crowd only add to the volume by singing along to each song, and as a result the venue is incredibly hot, something you don’t normally associate with a venue of this size.
Counting Crows love a cover and tonight we get three with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, ‘Friend of the Devil’ by The Grateful Dead, and Taylor Swift’s ‘The 1’ all getting a run out.
Highlights of the main set are ‘Omaha’ , ‘Round Here’ & ‘Boxcars’ and ‘Rain King’ that ends things before they return for the 3 song encore of ‘Under the Aurora’, ‘Hanginaround’ and the show closer, the haunting ‘Holiday in Spain’
After this they take the rapturous applause from the crowd who go home very happy (and probably hoarse) from an evening of feel good music from a band that never fails to deliver
Review and Photographs by Gavin Lowrey
