Counting Crows’ landmark debut album, August and Everything After, joins UMe’s acclaimed Vinylphyle reissue series as this month’s featured release, available to order today exclusively via uDiscover Music.

Cut directly from the original analog master tapes, August and Everything After is presented as a deluxe 2LP edition pressed on 180-gram black vinyl at RTI.

Produced to Vinylphyle’s premium audiophile standards, the release features a tip-on wrapped gatefold jacket in a satin matte finish, printed on clay-coated board, archival poly sleeves, and a four-panel insert with source tape scans, rare archival imagery, and new liner notes.

Released on September 14th, 1993, August and Everything After transformed Counting Crows from Bay Area club favorites into one of the defining rock bands of the decade. Arriving at a moment when alternative rock dominated popular culture, the album carved out its own distinct space, blending folk, rock, country, and Americana influences with deeply personal songwriting and richly textured arrangements.

The album became a cultural phenomenon, selling more than seven million copies in the United States and earning multi-platinum certifications worldwide. "Mr. Jones" became one of the defining singles of the 1990s, while the album’s emotional honesty and literary sensibility helped establish Counting Crows as one of the era’s most distinctive voices. More than three decades later, August and Everything After remains a touchstone of modern American songwriting and one of the most beloved debut albums of its generation.

Side A:
1. Round Here
2. Omaha
3. Mr. Jones

Side B:
4. Perfect Blue Buildings
5. Anna Begins
6. Time and Time Again

Side C:
7. Rain King
8. Sullivan Street
9. Ghost Train

Side D:
10. Raining in Baltimore
11. A Murder of One

August and Everything After is so much more than the sum of its parts. It’s no surprise that many people cite it as an album that comforted them during a low point in their life, but I was recently thinking about it as a concept album and feel it becomes incredibly powerful when you view it as one continuous story from song to song.

Adam Duritz has said the album’s overarching theme is change, which is pretty clear (it does end with the lyrics “change change change”). But me, personally, well, I truly took to viewing the meaning within each song when I had the CD on repeat back in the 90’s, but now this most glorious 2LP Vinylphyle album has been released, well, every lyric just seems to pop, to land in a more crystalized fashion to me.

Obviously an autobiographical album by Duritz, that makes him the narrator of the work and although I’d always refer to him as a separate character, he clearly shares Duritz’s issues with now-known mental illness (depersonalization/dissociative disorder). Ergo, the album is about him dealing with a cycle of depression wherein he tries to fix his issues by dreams of being famous, through just finding the right significant other, or through grand symbolic gestures; none of which help him break away from his depression and his demons.

Ultimately, he ends by projecting his issues on to a friend and suppressing his need to fix himself. The album doesn’t touch on it, but the narrator clearly needs therapy, medication and the hard work it takes to actually try and alleviate symptoms of mental illness, but the narrator is stuck trying the things that work in the movies (love, a sudden moment of clarity in the rain, etc.).

As someone that has suffered from severe depression since 7th grade, what’s more familiar to me than the feelings any individual song evokes is the loop that the narrator seems stuck in, which I often find myself stuck in also. OK, sure, this may all now sound so very depressing, but this album was a Godsend to me back then, knowing others were seemingly (even if musically as theatre) suffering as I was.

The depth of all that kinda aside, as you are here for a musical expose not a personal study on depression and everything after (see what I did there!), the album is truly a masterpiece when it comes to detailing a journey dealing with mental illness and the accompanying feelings of an unfulfilled life.

At its best, it can be a reflection on the listener’s life and show them how a cycle of trying to fix yourself by finding the right significant other or doing some empty symbolic gesture or focusing on fixing someone else will keep you stuck in an unfulfilling endless loop. The album doesn’t give you a solution (i.e. despite my reference to therapy etc., it never crosses the narrator’s mind), but it can help you recognize the problem and the patterns associated with it, which is the first step. It’s an absolutely beautiful album and will always have a special place in my heart.

In closing, this level of lyrical intensity was never again repeated by Counting Crows, for which they can be forgiven, for an album like this is a rare gift in the truest sense. Every musical group should be so lucky as to have only one album of this caliber. August is one of the five best albums of the 90’s, easily, doing the decade proud. And in my estimation, one of the 25 greatest of all-time, making the era all the better for it.

Produced by T Bone Burnett and recorded at several locations, including Sunset Sound in Hollywood, the album centered on the evocative songwriting of frontman Adam Duritz, whose vivid characters and emotional vulnerability resonated with listeners seeking something more introspective than the prevailing sounds of the era.

Anchored by enduring classics including “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here,” “Rain King,” and “A Murder of One,” August and Everything After balanced intimate storytelling with soaring melodies and masterful musicianship, creating a body of work that felt both deeply personal and universally relatable.

This new Vinylphyle edition presents the album as a 2LP set cut directly from the original analog master tapes by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound, allowing the music greater dynamic range, detail, and breathing room. Combined with deluxe packaging and newly commissioned liner notes by author Rick Florino, it offers the most premium vinyl presentation of this landmark recording to date.

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