Peter BurrowsThere is a peculiar alchemy to a Counting Crows concert. The songs are familiar — the ones once belted from car stereos and whispered in the dark — yet in performance they are mercurial, reshaped nightly by Adam Duritz’s restless muse. This, of course, is both the gift and the challenge of their live shows. Wednesday’s performance at Dublin’s Three Arena embodied that paradox: an evening of technical excellence and emotional excavation, where moments of brilliance occasionally brushed against the edges of frustration.
From Tulsa to ‘Hanginaround’
Opening with “Spaceman in Tulsa” and closing, predictably yet satisfyingly, with “Hanginaround,” the band favoured the more recent corners of their catalogue. Much of the set drew from their latest record, Butter Sweets, The Complete Miracle, a sprawling and tender late-career statement that trades youthful longing for something gentler and more reflective. “With Love, From A-Z” and “Under the Aurora” arrived not as grand declarations but as meditations — songs from a man who has learned to make peace with his own myth. Midway through the set, Duritz paused to dedicate the performance to “the love of my life,” a moment of unguarded sincerity that reframed the band’s decades-long narrative from heartbreak toward hard-won contentment.
Unpredictable Beauty
The audience, predictably, came yearning for the anthems — for “Mr. Jones,” for “Round Here” — and many found themselves disoriented by Duritz’s idiosyncratic phrasing and melodic detours. Yet that very unpredictability remains the lifeblood of Counting Crows: the songs live and breathe differently each night, elastic and alive. Duritz’s voice, though weathered, retains its exquisite volatility, soaring one moment, trembling the next, while the band’s interplay — the gentle tug between piano, mandolin, and electric guitar — remains a model of understated virtuosity.
Echoes of Butter Sweets
The influence of Butter Sweets, The Complete Miracle was felt throughout. Its songs, particularly “Candy Hearts” and “Ginger Ale Sky,” radiate the warmth of a band no longer burdened by reinvention but instead luxuriating in their craft. On stage, these tracks took on new shape — delicate, autumnal pieces suffused with the glow of middle age. Even for listeners unfamiliar with the record, their melodic generosity was undeniable.
Stories and Light
Visually, the production was restrained yet evocative. Strings of lights framed the musicians like fireflies, while subtle projections of cityscapes and storm-clouded horizons mirrored the emotional terrain of the songs. Between numbers, Duritz’s asides veered between humour and introspection — stories of life on the road, of the strange intimacy that accumulates between performer and audience over decades. His musings felt less like stage patter and more like journal entries shared aloud.
A Swift Surprise
The night’s most unexpected and arguably most affecting moment came with a cover of Taylor Swift’s “the 1.” What might have been a crowd-pleasing novelty instead became a revelation. Duritz’s interpretation stripped away Swift’s sleek melancholy and recast the song in the Crows’ vernacular — earthy, literate, bruised. It nestled seamlessly into the set, a dialogue across generations of songwriting.
Final Communion
By the encore — the inevitable “A Long December” and “Rain King” — the earlier tension between performer and audience had softened into something close to communion. It was not a transcendent show, nor did it aspire to be. Rather, it was a portrait of an artist still in motion, a band still capable of surprise, and a catalogue that continues to evolve rather than ossify.
