Somewhere Under Wonderland
On the seventh Counting Crows album, Adam Duritz is still the same dreadlocked dreamer you remember from the Nineties, channeling Van Morrison, R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen into word-zonked ballads that reference Jackie O., Elvis, Johnny Appleseed and more. Wonderland opens with the wild, innocent eight-minute hallucination "Palisades Park," then barrels through a buoyantly alienated set that only occasionally gets bogged down in meditative goop like "God of Ocean Tides." "I'm fading out in stereo/I don't remember meeee," Duritz sings on the roadhouse rocker "Dislocation," moaning a word he loves and an emotion that's still serving him well.