I won’t lie to you. I feel cheated by Counting Crows. After literally minutes of half-drunk wavering over whether to leave the pub and pop to HMV to buy a copy of their highly rated debut album August and Everything After on overpriced cassette, and then giving in to the inevitable, and then falling in love with its imagery, its sadness, its stupid handwritten cover, and finding out that Omaha was somewhere in middle America, and that its raining in Baltimore where a big-top is crumbling down, and learning EVERY SINGLE LINE to “Mr Jones”, all of them, I think, after all that, I think I deserved better than Recovering the Satellites and whatever else Counting Crows churned out in their post-mega-success stress. (I’ll give you “Hanginaround”, though. That is one catchy number.)

So, you’ll get no career making “Mr Jones” from me, just a slow song that doesn’t appear to be one of your top 10 most popular songs, according to Spotify.

Still. “Perfect Blue Buildings”. Crikey, it’s a sad and beautiful world that contains such a thing. And it’s exactly the kind of song that could get a guy a reputation for enjoying miserable music only, and for it I thank you, Adam Duritz, from the bottom of my sad song loving heart.