Counting Woes

The personal tales of confusion and complaint on the new Counting Crows album are so fuzzy and formless that it seemed like an act of mercy Tuesday night when songwriter-singer Adam Duritz moved to explain one of them during the band’s concert at the Wiltern Theatre.

“This is a song about . . . ,” he began, promisingly enough, before the adoring, enthusiastic audience. But then he shrugged, leaving the sentence incomplete and leaving us to wonder whether the idea behind the song was too complex, or simply not worth repeating.

Unfortunately, the song itself, “Monkey,” is so undistinguished that it didn’t provide any more clue than the aborted explanation did. It was just another reflection of the woe-is-me self-absorption that runs through the album.

Around the one-third mark in the 90-minute concert, which opened a four-night engagement at the Wiltern, you started feeling like someone trapped on a crowded bus next to a stranger who won’t stop talking about his b-o-r-i-n-g problems.

The disappointing thing about Duritz and the Crows is that when they arrived three years ago, they appeared to be on a musical journey worth sharing.

Like Joan Osborne and Hootie & the Blowfish, Counting Crows sold millions of records by recycling much of the rich, roots-oriented musical coloring of the ‘60s and ‘70s that has been so absent from mainstream ‘90s pop.

Of those three acts, Counting Crows was by far the most noteworthy because Duritz tapped into the most substantial influences. In such immediately appealing songs as “Round Here” and “Mr. Jones,” he quite effectively touched on the soulful spirit of such paramount figures as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and the Band.

To his credit, Duritz steps away from those influences on the new album, “Recovering the Satellites,” in an ambitious effort to find his own musical vision and voice. The bad news is that Duritz--who delivers everything on stage with a high sense of drama, waving his arms, pounding his chest, shielding his eyes from the light--has precious little to tell us.

Too often his words are just hollow phrases, giving us little sympathy for his pain or little comfort for our own. In “A Long December,” he sings:

And it’s one more day up in the canyons

And it’s one more night in Hollywood.

So?

In “Angels of the Silences,” he tells us: “I dream of Michelangelo when I’m lying in my bed / Little angels hang above my head and read me like an open book.” Oh, OK. Where’s that bus stop?

Even when the six-member band reached back to the first album for the seductive “Round Here,” things went awry because Duritz tried to turn the fluid number into the kind of stream-of-consciousness effort for which Morrison is noted. Bad idea.

Near the end of the set, after a few gracious words of praise about opening act Dog’s Eye View, Duritz at least showed a sense of humor. “Now back to my life,” he said, “and how I mope about it.” It was the most revealing line of the night.

* Counting Crows play Friday and Saturday at the Wiltern Theatre, 3790 Wilshire Blvd. 8 p.m. Sold out. (213) 380-5005.