Himalayans Reviews
The Himalayans - “She Likes the Weather”
By: Dave Lifton - [Published May 06, 2007]
Source: BlogCritics.Org
When bands become big, we frequently read about The Bands That Got Left Behind, but we rarely get to hear them. Now, fans of Counting Crows can finally hear one of lead singer Adam Duritz’s early bands with the release of The Himalayans’ She Likes The Weather, the first CD issued on Duritz’s new Tyrannosaurus Records label.
According to the story, an early version of Counting Crows featuring Duritz, Dave Bryson and Marty Jones (the “Mr. Jones” famed in song) had broken up when Duritz responded to an ad for a band looking for a lead singer. Things clicked at the audition and The Himalayans began playing in clubs around San Francisco, recording demos and gaining a local following.
At the same time, Duritz and Bryson had been putting together another incarnation of Counting Crows as a side project. They got signed to Geffen on the strength of their demo, which included a Himalayans song called “Round Here.” The rest is history, and, until now, the work Duritz did with them has never been heard.
So what does it sound like? It’s comforting to hear that everything that made Duritz stand out as a vocalist on that first Counting Crows record – the poetic, introspective verbosity, Van Morrisson-esque repetitions and emotional melodic and dynamic leaps – are on full display.
But musically, it’s considerably different, mixing jangly, chorused rhythm guitars with a decent white funk groove. Try to imagine a cross between early R.E.M. and an INXS compilation and you might have an idea.
When it works, as it does on much of the album, it approaches the best moments of the more famous act. But there are other times when the songs consist of little more than Duritz singing aimlessly over a simple chord progression.
Comparing the original version of “Round Here” with its more famous counterpart is a perfect example of the difference between the two bands. This rendition is driven by a melodic bass line and a winding guitar part. The chiming arpeggio guitar and soulful organ of the Counting Crows recording are nowhere in evidence, and, as a result, the empathy that those parts provided is gone.
She Likes The Weather consists of 17 songs the band recorded during several sessions between October 1990 and December 1991, and also includes a radio interview. Because these are basically demos, the sound quality is not always good, although it is listenable for the most part.
I wish this had come out ten years or so earlier, when they could have capitalized on the band’s success. But it’s better late than never, and longtime Counting Crows fans and completists will find this a fascinating and essential glance at Duritz’s roots.
The Himalayans - “She Likes the Weather”
By: Deniz Kuypers [Published April 30, 2007]
Source: 411mania.comToad the Wet Sprocket and early R.E.M. inspired offerings from a pre-dreadlocked Adam Duritz.I am generally wary of albums that attempt to gather together all the unreleased old work of an artist from before he or she made it big, even in the case of someone like Bob Dylan, who wrote great tunes mind-bogglingly early on in his career. With a few exceptions, such releases usually serve as a study of how a songwriter came to craft the beautiful tunes he’s known for. Beautiful melodies don’t just drop out of the air. One expects an artist to have a blueprint of his work somewhere, a building block or stepping stone. Rather than being self-contained albums, they’re fans-only studies of trial and error. Consequently, they’re rarely any good: they try to salvage the best material the artist himself deemed not good enough to reuse or revisit at a later stage in his career. They say, “Look, this stuff is almost as good as the stuff he’s known for!” with almost being the key word.She Likes the Weather is a posthumous retrospective of an early-90s Bay Area band by the name of The Himalayans. Heard of them? If you didn’t, that’s perfectly understandable. But if you did, I can probably tell you why. The band consisted of Dan Jewett on lead guitar, Chris Roldan on drums, Dave Janusko on guitar, and a gentleman by the name of Adam Duritz on vocals. Yes, that Adam Duritz. She Likes the Weather is a collection of 17songs written and recorded right before Duritz formed and gained mainstream success with the band everybody knows, Counting Crows.In his liner notes to this album, Dan Jewett is quick to point out the differences between Counting Crows and The Himalayans. One gets the feeling that even Dan knows his band was left behind in the dustbowls of time and completely overshadowed by the Crows, but he’s struggling to regain some of the former band’s importance. He wants The Himalayans to be more than just a side note in Adam Duritz’s Wikipedia entry. He is quick to point out that, toward the end of their short-lived career, The Himalayans were already playing soon-to-be-Counting-Crows-classics “Mr. Jones” and “Rain King.” He also claims that today The Himalayans could fill “huge arenas on their own.” I’m not sure that’s a true statement. If they played Crows songs, then—perhaps—yes, they could fill arenas. But The Himalayans were not The Yardbirds of the early Nineties. Jewett tries hard to establish The Himalayans’ own identity while at the same time implying, “This is where it all started.” But even though it might be accurate to say that Counting Crows would never have existed if it hadn’t been for The Himalayans, the truth of the matter is that the reason this Himalayans disc is now finally seeing the light is largely owed to the popularity of the Crows. (It’s interesting to see that, while Jewett tries to both distance his band from the Crows, the record label, as a slight nudge to the potential buyer, has listed all the musicians on the back of the disc. It’s inconspicuous enough not to notice, but once you see it, it’s like that convenient but under the breath cough of someone wanting your attention.)So it’s nigh impossible to listen to She Likes the Weather as anything but a document of a young band that never made it but with a lead singer who did. We search for clues that can be traced back to the Crows. If anyone ever wondered where the lines “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day” came from that Duritz signs toward the end of the live version of the Crows’ “I’m Not Sleeping” (to be found on their 2-disc live album Across a Wire), you’ll find your answer here. For the casual Counting Crows fan, the brilliant “Round Here” is here recreated (or precreated) as a bass-driven, angsty light-rock tune that can’t decide between wanting to be a ballad or a rocker. Jewett, in his liner notes, singles out this song and explains in detail how it was basically a Himalayans song they were forced to hand over to the Crows. This early recording, however, lacks the sweet heartache and quiet despair of the Crows’ version. It’s like a rough demo of four musicians juggling a great tune and great words but being
unable to get it quite right. Plus, the three-note guitar line of the Crows version has gone on to become a classic, and it’s hard to not want to hear those notes in the Himalayans recording.She Likes the Weather shows The Himalayans to be a band that is still trying to shake that 1980s’ sound. Their jangly, slightly frenzied guitars are reminiscent of early R.E.M. while the driving bass brings back memories of The Cure. A reference point in the Crows’ back catalogue would be “Einstein on the Beach” (an obscure early track that was released only recently). Jewett says his band built their songs around the bass as opposed to the Crows, who focus more on rhythm guitar. He should have added the piano and mandolin to that. With Counting Crows, Duritz managed to take these obvious 1980s and 90s influences, throw in a good helping of folksy Americana, and mold them into something richer, more textured and warmer.
Perhaps, then, this is what makes a great band. When Adam Duritz went on to form Counting Crows, he learned to channel his influences. On these Himalayans recordings, the band tries to hard to fit into a certain genre and sound like the bands that inspired them to pick up a guitar and a microphone in the first place, which makes for songs that work hard to be something bigger and better than they truly are. In contrast, by the time August and Everything After was released, Duritz had learned to name-check Dylan without sounding like Dylan.
Duritz admittedly has one of the prettiest voices in rock music and I could listen to him sing almost anything. But he also has a propensity to wallow in misery and be awfully depressing. Duritz will always be a melancholy, heartsick balladeer, and some of his darkest work (“A Long December,” “Rain King,” “Colorblind”) happens to be his best. At times, however, he goes off the deep end and internalizes his sorrow to such an extent that it becomes merely bleak and depressing and hard to relate to. Duritz likes to tell stories, like a young Springsteen. On She Likes the Weather there are plenty of typical Duritz phrasings. It’s all “she” this and “she” that and “flowers in the rain” type of writing, but it’s with this “flowers in the rain” where he crosses the line from being poignant to being something more miserable and harder to penetrate. She Likes the Weather offers much of that type of writing. Jewett admits that Duritz wrote about things a lot of teenagers go through, and again, the fact that Duritz mana
ged to exorcise or tone down many of these demons with Counting Crows made for music that’s ultimately more long-lasting and rewarding (in terms of lyrics and also catharsis) than these early recordings.
Now let’s step back for a moment and give this band a fair chance. Let’s try to pretend we’ve never heard of Counting Crows. Try to see this album as a statement of what-could-have-been, the work of a potentially great 1990s band who, through sheer bad luck, never made it. Opener “Jaded” is pleasant enough, and so is “River Shannon.” “Babies and Diamonds and Cars” demonstrates how close Duritz came to creating the sound ofAugust with Jewett and the rest, and perhaps this shows the real promise of The Himalayans. They could have had their lucky break with Duritz as a frontman if… If what? If they’d recorded their version of August? It’s a point one could argue about endlessly. I happen to believe that when Duritz gathered around him the musicians that would ultimately become Counting Crows, he stumbled upon the right, magical combination of people and inspiration to enable himself to fulfill the promise of his earlier songwriting. Sadly, The Himalayans were just that: a promise of better things to come.
The 411: Hey, maybe you’re that kid who can’t get enough of Toad-style college rock, or you actually grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 90s and feel Adam Duritz never got any better than when he fronted The Himalayans. In that case, She Likes the Weather might be for you. For the hardcore Crows fans among us, this disc offers an intriguing look at the creative process that eventually produced the band we all love. But as a record in its own right, Weather feels slight, inspired but not inspiring, and hopelessly passed by: by the decade that produced it, and by the band it spawned.
Final Score: 6.0 [ Average ]
Adam Duritz / The Himalayans - Never Before Released CD out now
By: Pär Winberg [Published April 13, 2007]
Source: Melodic.net
Counting Crows lead singer, Adam Duritz, is releasing some music from his past — The Himalayans, “She’s Like The Weather.”The band made one album together in 1989 and never released it. Until now. Duritz calls The Himalayans music “the sound that made the sound” and says this album reflects “probably the greatest period of musical productivity of my entire life.”As of April 12th, a fully re-mastered CD of “She’s Like The Weather” will be available on Duritz’s record label, www.tyrannosaurusrecords.net. Nowhere else. The CD includes the original version of “Round Here” – later covered by Counting Crows. According to Duritz, “A part of the life of every musician is the people he plays with, and, for me, they’ve always been the most important part. But there’s a big part of my life that I’ve never been able to share – The Himalayans. It’s a part of my life I’m intensely proud of without which I could never have become who I am.” The Himalayans sadly came to an end when Duritz’s side project, Counting Crows signed with Geffen. For the full story on The Himalayans background, check out http://adam.countingcrows.com/journal.php?uid=2363
