With over 20 million albums sold worldwide, eight Top 5 singles, and three records that have broken the Top 5 on the Billboard 200, Counting Crows are set to release an expanded deluxe version of their seminal album, ‘August and Everything After’ in the UK on January 28th, 2008 (Universal/Geffen).

‘August and Everything After’, the Counting Crows first album released in 1994, showcased the band as a chart-topping powerhouse. Once MTV aired the video to their top 5 track “Mr. Jones,” the album jumped 40 spots on the Billboard Top 200 in one week.

In addition to the original songs on ‘August and Everything After’, the deluxe version will include previously unreleased demos plus the entire final show from the August Tour in 1994 from Elysee Montmartre in Paris, France. Also included are liner notes written by lead singer/songwriter, Adam Duritz.

Still going strong today, most recently, their single “Accidentally In Love” from the Shrek 2 soundtrack earned them an Oscar™, Grammy, and Golden Globe nomination, and reached the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Following up the deluxe version of ‘August and Everything After’, the Counting Crows will release their long awaited new album ‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’ within weeks. The record is the Crows’ first studio album in almost 5 years, since the release of ‘Hard Candy’ in 2002.

Counting Crows: August and Everything After [Extra Tracks] [Deluxe Edition] on amazon.co.uk

For more information about the Counting Crows, please visit:

Counting Crows on Myspace
Counting Crows Official Website

On March 25, 2008, Counting Crows will release their fifth studio album (and their first in five years), ‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’, on Geffen/Interscope.

‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’ is just your average brilliant, unsparing rock & roll song cycle about the high life and the low life, about sin and whatever the hell follows. This is an album with two distinct yet deeply related halves:

‘Saturday Nights’ – the album’s angry, electric, dissolute opening salvo – was produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies, Foo Fighters). The more acoustic and folk-influenced ‘Sunday Mornings’ was produced by Brian Deck whose past credits include Modest Mouse and Iron & Wine.

Free Counting Crows downloads:

“1492″ MP3
“When I Dream Of Michelangelo” MP3
from ‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’

For Adam Duritz, ‘Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings’ is “about dissolution and disintegration. It’s about when Saturday night happens and you lose all sense of yourself. And it’s about when you wake up Sunday morning and look back at the wreck you’ve made of your life and you think, ‘How can I possibly fix this? How can I ever climb out of this hole?’ And then you start to try and climb.”

Duritz says of the inspiration for the title, “When I finally realized what this record was about and that it was actually going to be two different records that fit together as one, the title popped into my head immediately. It’s a title that’s been used before in slightly different forms more than once, but none of them were the inspiration for my title. That came from a late night stop at a truck stop somewhere in Georgia while we were touring August and Everything After.

“One day I grabbed this bizarre looking double-cassette by Ralph Stanley called Saturday Night & Sunday Morning. After that, you had to fight me to get it out of the stereo. It’s just an unreal record about sin and redemption with inspired song choices and unearthly performances from Stanley himself and a sea of guests.

“These days, everybody wants to tell you how different every genre of music is and how one kind is good and another isn’t. But on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, country and bluegrass find a way to effortless prove that it’s all really just music. Our album may not have much redemption in the end but we got all the sin I could live with and at least an attempt to try for something better.”

Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings on amazon.com

Counting Crows on Myspace
Counting Crows Official Website

The ever-changing lineup of musicians that play the songs of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Mark Oliver Everett (aka E), unveils both its first “best of” compilation, ‘Meet The EELS: Essential EELS Vol. 1, 1996-2006 (CD+DVD)‘, and its first collection of rarities, B-sides, film contributions and unreleased tracks, the ‘EELS Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2006 (2CD+DVD)’, each issued by DreamWorks/Geffen/UMe, scheduled for release on January 21, 2008.

All videos are available for the first time on DVD and all music is digitally remastered with both packages packed with never before seen photos, artefacts and Everett’s notes about each track.

‘Meet The EELS: Essential EELS Vol. 1, 1996-2006′ spans the first decade of the EELS with 24 selections on CD and 12 promotional videos on DVD. The CD opens with four tracks from the band’s 1996 debut ‘Beautiful Freak’, two tracks from the Eels’ highly acclaimed second album 1998’s ‘Electro-shock Blues’ follow plus a previously unreleased Jon Brion remix of “Climbing To The Moon.”

Four songs from 2000’s ‘Daisies Of The Galaxy’, which NME dubbed “a masterpiece in almost every way,” are represented on the Essentials album plus three tracks from 2001’s ‘Souljacker’, which Time Magazine crowned as one of the best albums of the year, was acclaimed overseas with NME calling it “downright brilliant” and the London’s Sunday Times named it Album Of The Year, writing that “the conventional wisdom that (the earlier album) ‘Electro-shock Blues’ was E’s masterpiece will have to be reassessed: it was clearly just one of his masterpieces.”

2003’s live-in-the-studio Shootenanny! (awarded four stars by Rolling Stone) adds two fan favorites, while five songs from the highly acclaimed, and best charting album in the band’s history ‘Blinking Lights and Other Revelations’ are included. Also on the Essentials album are the previously unreleased “Get Ur Freak On,” a live version of “Dirty Girl” from 2006’s ‘With Strings: Live At Town Hall’ and “I Need Some Sleep” from the Shrek 2 soundtrack.

Highlights within the 50 CD tracks ‘EELS Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2006′ are longtime concert favorite “Living Life” from the Daniel Johnston tribute album, the previously unreleased 2006 cover of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” and other covers including James Carr’s “Dark End of The Street” and Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend.”

Useless Trinkets also includes a large handful of BBC performances, unique live versions of “Novocaine For The Soul” and “My Beloved Monster,” tracks from films – The End Of Violence, Holes, Levity and How The Grinch Stole Christmas and many previously unreleased tracks including the original collections title track which frontman Everett performs backed by a 28 piece orchestra. The DVD features six performances from the EELS’ Lollapalooza 2006 performance, including a gospel rave-up take on “My Beloved Monster” and a high octane rumble through “Souljacker part I.”

‘Meet The EELS: Essential EELS Vol. 1, 1996-2006′ and ‘EELS Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2006′ prove why, following that 2006 Lollapalooza performance, Rolling Stone wrote: “EELS define coolness.”

The EELS are one of music’s most acclaimed and idiosyncratic enterprises, accomplishing what The New Yorker calls “that rarest thing in contemporary pop: a unique sound.”

Tracklistings:

Meet The EELS: Essential EELS Vol. I, 1996-2006 (CD+DVD)

1 Novocaine For the Soul
2 Susan’s House
3 My Beloved Monster
4 Your Lucky Day in Hell
5 3 Speed
6 Last Stop: This Town
7 Climbing to the Moon (Jon Brion Remix)*
8 Flyswatter
9 I Like Birds
10 Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues
11 It’s A Motherfu?@!r
12 Souljacker Part 1
13 That’s Not Really Funny
14 Fresh Feeling
15 Get Ur Freak On*
16 Saturday Morning
17 Love of the Loveless
18 Dirty Girl (live at Town Hall)
19 I Need Some Sleep
20 Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)
21 I’m Going to Stop Pretending That I Didn’t Break Your Heart
22 Trouble With Dreams
23 Railroad Man
24 Losing Streak

EELS Video Collection DVD:

1 Novocaine For the Soul
2 Susan’s House
3 Rags to Rags
4 Your Lucky Day in Hell
5 Last Stop: This Town
6 Cancer For the Cure
7 Flyswatter
8 Souljacker Part I
9 Saturday Morning
10 Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)
11 Trouble with Dreams
12 Dirty Girl (live at Town Hall)

*previously unreleased

EELS Useless Trinkets: B-Sides, Soundtracks, Rarities and Unreleased 1996-2006 (2CD+DVD)

DISC 1:

1 Novocaine For the Soul (live from hell)
2 Fu@!er
3 My Beloved Monster (live from tennessee)
4 Dog’s Life
5 Susan’s Apartment
6 Manchester Girl (BBC)
7 Flower (BBC)
8 My Beloved Mad Monster Party (BBC)
9 Animal
10 Stepmother
11 Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
12 Your Lucky Day in Hell (Michael Simpson remix)*
13 Altar Boy
14 Novocaine for the Soul (Moog Cookbook remix)
15 If I Was Your Girlfriend (live)*
16 Bad News
17 Funeral Parlor
18 Hospital Food (BBC)
19 Open the Door (BBC)
20 Birdgirl on a Cell Phone
21 Vice President Fruitley
22 My Beloved Monstrosity
23 Dark End of the Street (live)*
24 The Cheater’s Guide to Your Heart (live)*
25 Useless Trinkets*

DISC 2:

1 Mr. E’s Beautiful Remix
2 Souljacker part I (alternate version)*
3 Dog Faced Boy (alternate version)*
4 Jennifer Eccles
5 Rotten World Blues
6 Can’t Help Falling in Love
7 Christmas is Going to the Dogs
8 Mighty Fine Blues
9 Eyes Down
10 Skywriting
11 Taking a Bath in Rust
12 Estranged Friends*
13 Her
14 Waltz of the Naked Clowns
15 I Like Birds (live)*
16 Sad Foot Sign
17 Living Life
18 The Bright Side
19 After the Operation
20 Jelly Dancers
21 I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man (live at Town Hall)
22 Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues (live at Town Hall)
23 I Want to Protect You*
24 I Put a Spell on You (live)*
25 Saw a UFO*

EELS Lollapalooza 2006 DVD:

1 Saturday Morning
2 Eyes Down
3 My Beloved Monster
4 A Magic World
5 Not Ready Yet
6 Souljacker Part I

*previously unreleased

Eels 2008 UK tour dates:

Dates could be added or changed! Go to the Eels Official Website for the latest news and information.

February 25 2008 – London, Royal Festival Hall
February 26 2008 – Birmingham, Town Hall
February 27 2008 – Manchester, Bridgewater Hall
February 28 2008 – Glasgow, Royal Concert Hall
March 1 2008 – Gateshead, Sage
March 2 2008 – Brighton, Dome

For more information and the latest news go to:

EELS Official Website

Related: BBC Four documentary about Mark Everett and his father