Photo Credit: Mark Seliger
This was a night drenched in nostalgia for us, like we were transported to being a teenager again. When we were in high school there were a handful of bands which were monstrously popular among our year group and Counting Crows were one of those constantly spinning on the CD deck in our island school. Remarkably this was our first ever time seeing the band live and we were was buzzing to make a wee 750-mile round-trip for this and they didn’t disappoint. It was a great show with more hooks than an angler’s lunch box but it was also messy in all the right ways as the band straddled that fine line between heartbreak and hoedown at Edinburgh’s Corn Exchange.
From the off they were firing on all cylinders. Or at least it was when frontman Adam Duritz’s in-ear monitors weren’t trying to blow his head off. “I might end up deaf by the end of this,” he joked early on, grimacing as he adjusted his ear piece. “It’s like having occasional explosions in my ears.”
The set opened with the crowd pleasing story telling with Spaceman in Tulsa, a slow-burn welcome that had the crowd swaying in happy unison before the band slid into the bittersweet groove of If I Could Give All My Love (or Richard Manuel Is Dead).
Then came Mr. Jones — and all hell broke loose in the best possible way. The entire crowd roared as one, a full-throated singalong that could probably be heard down on Princes Street. One slightly blurry and tipsy man in front of us bellowed every word with the conviction of a man being baptised in melody — and when it ended, he fell to his knees, fists to the sky, tears in his eyes. You can’t fake that kind of connection. It meant the world to him.
Duritz and company shifted gears through the night — Omaha and Anna Begins as warm and wistful as ever, Colorblind showcased his incredible vocal range but all the while the band’s easy chemistry gave even well-worn songs new muscle; Round Here swelled and cracked like a wistful storm cloud, while their Grateful Dead and Joni Mitchell covers felt reverential yet restless, twisted through the Crows’ lens of yearning Americana.
A Long December remains one of the band’s most iconic, and emotional, tracks and hearing it live doesn’t so much tug on the heart strings but take a giant sledgehammer into the soul. It rolled into a triumphant Rain King, before the encore sent the crowd home elated as Holiday in Spain closed things on a note of sweet, sun-drenched melancholy.
Counting Crows in 2025 might be older, scruffier, maybe even half-deaf after their audio gremlins but on a winter’s night in Edinburgh, they reminded everyone in that room of why they remain relevant thirty years down the road. And when that man dropped to his knees during Mr. Jones is the kind of band, and song approval, that reminds you of the power of music and how it can touch people again.
8/10
