I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts

20/10/96 : Recovering The Satellites - Counting Crows

I loved (and still) love August And Everything After, the Crows debut and so I bought this at the time of release - and just found it a bit of a disappointment, so haven't listened to it in ages.  However, a lot of these songs turn up on Across A Wire, which was their follow-up album (which I also love) so I'm a lot more familiar with them than I would be otherwise and it will interesting to see what I think of the originals (some of the versions on AAW are very different - which REALLY annoys Mrs Reed!).

Hmmm - I do think familiarity has improved my view of the album, but there's very few on here that I prefer to the live versions (but maybe that's just familiarity playing its part again). Overall, I enjoyed listening to this, but found the songs or the mix just a little too rough at the edges when compared with AAEA - I do appreciate that for others this constitutes an improvement.  There are some great tracks on here though - "Angels Of The Silences", "Have You Seen Me Lately?" and the title track are all very fine, but "A Long December" wins by a long way for me because of its beautifully poignant lyrics.

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

I was also extremely pleased to see another album I owned, bringing us up to 2/11.

We're at #4 with a new entry this week in its first week of a mere six week run, although it did come back for another six weeks after Xmas (but never got higher than #81 in that run).  But when you compare it with the 51 weeks that AAEA managed, it appears I wasn't alone in finding this a bit of a disappointment.  Above it in the charts were Simply Red, Dina Carroll (a new entry) and Celine Dion, with Crowded House completing the top 5 and no other new entries in the top ten.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album - particularly when you consider it got to #1 in the US (interestingly, AAEA only got to #4 in the US, but sold about 3 times as many as this one).  I did learn it was produced by Gil Norton, who has worked on a lot of albums over his career - most of the critics praised his work on this (unlike me) even if they didn't always like the album.

"Customers also listened to" Gin Blossoms (and there's a close link here which I'd never really considered), Hootie & The Blowfish and Soul Asylum - a definite US feel there.  All in all, I enjoyed revisiting this and think my opinion of it did improve as a result - I was also surprised at how much of the internet thinks this is their high point.  My familiarity with the adjacent albums means this is unlikely to supplant them in my affection, but it never hurts to have an alternative to go to.

13/10/96 - I didn't mind this at all
27/10/96 - Pleasant, if slightly insubstantial