Counting Crows have confirmed their return from a seven-year-long creative hiatus with the announcement of their first studio album since 2014, Butter Miracle, Suite One.
Following on from Somewhere Under Wonderland, the band’s upcoming outing will feature only four tracks, but will have a combined runtime of 19 minutes, with a follow-up offering currently in the works.
The Grammy and Academy Award-nominated seven-piece have also ushered in the news with the release of the album’s lead single, the free-flowing, acoustic guitar-driven rock number Elevator Boots, which you can listen to below.
We are warmly welcomed back into the rock ‘n’ roll outfit’s sonic universe with a series of effortless acoustic lines, which combine melodic pull-off-infused licks with oversized strums, before a punchy electric guitar joins the party with a passage of pumping powerchords.
Written by Counting Crows lead singer and frontman Adam Duritz while he was living in the UK, the wistful track is described as a “glam look at life on the road in a band, awash in the thrill, the isolation, and the cleansing power of rock and roll”.
It is also said to personify “what it means to spend your life tuned into the one thing that means the most to you even as, at times, it leaves you a little out of tune with the rest of the world”.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Duritz described the album as the first half of a full Counting Crows album, and revealed he is “writing the second one now”.
Of Elevator Boots, which is said to be a companion to the album’s final track Bobby and the Rat-Kings, Duritz added, “They’re both about living rock ‘n’ roll. One’s from the perspective of the guy playing and the other is kind of the perspective of a fan, both of which I’ve lived in my life.”
The Butter Miracle, Suite One tracklist is as follows:
- The Tall Grass
- Elevator Boots
- Angel of 14th Street
- Bobby and the Rat-Kings
Butter Miracle, Suite One is available to preorder now ahead of its release on May 21.
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