I Heard This: Perfect Blue Buildings at Bubbles
What: "Perfect Blue Buildings" by Counting Crows.
When: 10 a.m., the morning after Thanksgiving.
Where: Bubbles Tea and Coffee on Delridge Way, WEST SEATTLE.
Some coffee shops play super-hip music that only avid listeners of KEXP will be able recognize. Others play bland smooth jazz or endless rotations of Paul McCartney and holiday pap. Still others, like Bubbles, opt for KMTT-esque AOR satellite offerings from the likes of Dave Matthews and Counting Crows, both of whom I heard at Bubbles during a coffee break in between a long, post-gluttony walk and a bus ride into work on this gloriously crisp and sunny Friday morn.
Slam Adam Duritz's overwrought vocal sytlings and angsty, pre-emo (premo?) melodrama all you want, but August and Everything After is a virtually flawless, brilliantly paced album of haunting ballads and poppier, radio-friendly hits like "Rain King" and "Mr. Jones," which got played to death back when the band rose to prominence during Clinton's first term. But elsewhere on the album, you get the likes of "Perfect Blue Buildings," "Raining in Baltimore," "Omaha," "Anna Begins," and "Sullivan Street," all gorgeous, personal, heartfelt slowdowns which reveal Duritz and his mates to be far, far more than a hipster punch line.
Comment
