Saturday Nights

"Saturday night's all right for fighting," Elton John once declared. Adam Duritz agrees: '1492', the opener of the Counting Crows' best album in a decade, has the front man taking potshots at those who mock his fake dreadlocks ("I'm a Russian Jew American/ Impersonating African Jamaican") and those who can't understand how he scores one hot woman after another.

Amid the bristling guitar and racing drums, he touches on something more devastating: his mental illness of the past 10 years. "Now I'm the king of everything / And I'm the king of nothing," he reveals — but where there was once despair and self pity, the singer and chief songwriter now sounds defiant.

That defiance is the hallmark of the album's 'Saturday Nights' portion, six songs produced by Gil Norton that recreate the ballsy country rock of 1996's 'Recovering The Satellites'. 'Hanging Tree' is built around a simple Nirvana-style guitar riff, then dressed up with piano pounding, squealing slide guitars — and mandolins; 'Insignificant' (with its line of "I don't want to feel so different") is a singalong crowd pleaser in the style of 'Mr Jones'; 'Cowboys' gallops like John Wayne in pursuit of a runaway stagecoach; and the incongruously titled 'Sundays', with its angelic glockenspiel-accompanied chorus, sets the tone for this collection's quieter second half.

Appropriately bundled together as 'Sunday Mornings', the remaining eight songs find Duritz and his five cohorts in a more chilled-out — but no less captivating — state. "So cover this warm night / In a blanket of starlight / And I'll follow this freeway / Out into the air," sings Duritz wistfully to the stark accompaniment of guitars and harmonica on 'Washington Square'. The vintage Dylan-style acoustic folk of the band's debut album 'August and Everything After' continues on the stark 'On Almost Any Sunday Morning', the relatively cheery 'When I Dream Of Michelangelo' and the tortured piano ballad 'On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago'.

'Anyone But You' and 'You Can't Count On Me' crank it up a little and dilute the Duritz wail but both are too reminiscent of the safe (read boring) stuff of the band's third and fourth outings. Rampant closer 'Come Around' rectifies matters somewhat — although, in sounding not unlike vintage Crows anthem 'Round Here', underlines the biggest problem with 'Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings': they've done this all before. But even if the lyrics recycle references (Los Angeles, Baltimore, Omaha and angels all make a comeback) and some tunes sound vaguely familiar, the band are clearly back at their best; fighting fit once more.