Geffen Records
2002
Hard Candy
About This Album
Hard Candy is the sound of a band at a creative and poetic summit. Over three previous studio recordings, the Counting Crows have moved through varied musical territories as a way of conveying emotion through performance, texture, and nuance; the place where the mood meets the heart meets the mind. Hard Candy is both a radical departure from the band's previous method of recording, and, contextually, an affirmation of what sets them apart from virtually every other band on the rock and roll scene: their commitment to songwriting as craft. These 13 tracks are strongly committed to conveying a song in the hook rather than in the lyric. They are tight, crisp, razor sharp pop songs on a bright, shiny, rock record. Every backing vocal, every lilting string, trumpet line, or piano run, was meticulously crafted and scripted into this invigorating musical architecture -- along with the lyrics. Adam Duritz offers at least as much as he's given on any other album. The set opens with the title track, a wide open four/four rocker illustrated by shimmering piano lines and ringing Byrds-like 12-string electric guitars punching up the middle. Duritz sings with an Allen Ginsberg-like heroic candor: "On certain Sundays in November when the weather bothers me/I empty drawers of other summers/where my shadows used to be/ You send your lover off to China and you wait for her to call/You put your girl up on a pedestal and you wait for her to fall/I put my summers back in a letter/All the regrets you can't forget are somehow pressed upon a picture in the face of such an ordinary girl.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10)

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