I like the debut album enough to give them a 3. Only really heard âA Long Decemberâ (pretty great) and âBig Yellow Taxiâ (a stinker) from the rest of their career though.
Lots of great songs on that debut, âRound Hereâ is tremendous, but I can totally see why they would do nothing for a lot of people. Theyâre probably one of the least âcoolâ acts weâve covered in HGATR.
I had the first album when I was a teenager and rinsed the shit out of it. Iâd only heard of it because I downloaded a weird bootleg of Panic At The Disco doing a very meandering cover of Around Here and thought it was really good for some reason. Nobody else I knew had even heard of them so I was convinced they were a super deep cut that only real heads knew about.
Anyway despite having listened to that first album multiple times a day for a few years I literally havenât heard it since I was 16 and donât really care to, and have never heard another song by them.
Earnest 90s deep-male-voice rock is my least favourite genre of music and theyâre no exception but bafflingly did Mr Jones which is inexplicably good. They get a point for that and nothing else.
This could get ugly. I had Recovering the Satellites on cd when I was about 15. I remember a sticker on the front saying it was a billboard no 1 album which was weird cos Iâm pretty sure Iâd never heard of them until that point. I donât think they were really a concern in the UK until a bit later and youâd hear that one song (Mr Jones) at wedding receptions and stuff.
Anyway, as a self-conscious teenager, I remember being acutely aware, even then, that they definitely werenât a âcool bandâ. I do wonder what made them especially deserving of that reputation though. Maybe earnest singer songwriter stuff was just very at odds with what was popular at the time in alternative music: heavier, angstier stuff.
Iâm pretty indifferent anyway. Pretty sure they got worse as they went on.
Being âcoolâ is no indicator of whether a band are good or not. Who cares if a band are cool or not, if you think theyâre good then listen to them and enjoy yourself. You canât do that with Counting Crows though, because theyâre terrible.
One of those bands Iâd always dismiss as being rubbish but on more than one occasion a song has come on somewhere which I thought was quite decent and it;s been them. Nothing has ever made me want to do a deep dive or anything but they seem fine
I do like how in the picture that thatâs clearly a band which doesnât need 7 members, and they all look like theyâve come from different bands. Your man 3rd on the left must have missed the Rocket for the Crypt audition