After years of searching, I finally found it; the origin point of what Oasis manager Alan McGee would later dismiss as “bedwetter rock” – earnest, melancholy, G-chord-humping, plaintive 90s guitar music, with “confessional” lyrics lifted straight from some hair-brained and hair-sprayed pretty boy’s imaginary diary, and a vibe carefully calculated to appeal almost exclusively to teenage girls who still secretly wanted to listen to New Kids On The Block, but whose hands were staid by the internalized admonitions of their Doc Marten-wearing, Layne Staley-worshipping older sisters. This wanky, whining, solipsistic iteration of indie rock would ultimately displace smack-addled grunge in the US and snide, confrontational Britpop in the UK, and the names of its sinister Nazgûl are known to all; the Goo Goo Dolls, the Calling, Snow Patrol, and of course, Coldplay, the fearful Witch-King of anemic ladyboys who, unluckily for the music-buying public, learned to play guitar instead of raising some cage fighting Chad’s illegitimate children.
And I put it to you, dear reader, that this malignant cancer in the body politic of rock music was birthed here, by August and Everything After, the debut album of the Counting Crows. We shall unpack that outlandish claim in short order, but first, let us attend to the essentials – that is, to the list of cliches underpinning the inception of both this record and its progenitors. Of course, the Counting Crows started out in California; they were beardy, long-haired Folk Music Wankers with aspirations to making “meaningful” radio-friendly soft rock; and most unsurprisingly of all, they were courted by nine different record companies after the circulation of their demo tape, because the suits immediately recognized their music for what it is; Easy Listening masquerading as something profound, perfect for the boring, pretentious, middle-class parents and the anxiety-ravaged younger sisters of Nirvana’s delightfully disordered fanbase.
Such are the demoniacal origins of August and Everything After, and they explain why this record represents a most exemplary specimen of the risible combination of pseudo-counter-cultural bohemianism and pristinely corporate capitalism that California, the Mecca of affluent and self-regarding hippies the world over, is known and rightly despised for. Because needless to say, the songs on this album are considerably less interesting than anything I have thus far claimed about its historical significance as the Ground Zero of bedwetter rock. Its contents are soppier and more prosaic than a late-90s Ronan Keating solo project. The songs blend into an interminable, imperceptible fug of languid, mid-tempo, softly-strummed Van Morrison demos with pained vocals and therapy speak lyrics about being young, miserable, perennially single, and with nothing to do between the Cold War and the War on Terror except watch MTV and stare longingly at your own naval. I’m told that the standout song is “Mr. Jones”, an anthem to stalkerish incels that is about 200 times less interesting than “Every Breath You Take”, but the truth is, it made as little of an impression on me as anything else on this moist fart of a record.
Either way, I will expend no further energy here analyzing the musical and lyrical intricacies of August and Everything After, for these are much less important than my overall thesis that this album represents the apocalyptic union of Echidna and Typhon that birthed the monstrous hydra of gently strumming, soul-bearing, bedwetting indie bands who wiped anything even remotely redolent of punk off the musical landscape forever. Where else should we point the finger, after all? You can’t blame 80s jangle pop – R.E.M. were too off the wall and hippy-dippy, the Smiths too caustic. You also, apparently, can’t blame Jeff Buckley, as much as I’d like to, because the equally anodyne and humourless Grace was only released the year after this particular wet blanket of a record first slouched toward Bethlehem to be born.
No. The evidence points in only One Direction; ultimate responsibility for Buckley’s sodden underpants, for Tom Chaplin getting on Top of the Pops to moan about his melted cheese sandwich of a face, for Chris Martin insisting to a tearful Gwynnie that “lights will guide her home” from the local farmers’ market after they ran out of Tofu… it’s all here on the Counting Crows’ Crime Against Humanity of a debut album. And until now, they’ve gotten away with it, which is impressive, considering that not even Adolf Eichmann eluded justice for over two decades.
Overall rating: *
Standout track: “Mr. Jones”