Counting Crows Enmore Theatre review – The Enmore Theatre fills early tonight, the room already humming before a note is played, and Kingswood waste no time leaning into it. There’s nothing tentative about their set. It’s all grit and movement, a band that understands exactly how to grab a room and hold it. Guitars come in thick and immediate, the rhythm section driving hard, and the whole thing feels built for sweat rather than subtlety.
When Counting Crows step into the light, the atmosphere shifts entirely. The room exhales. What follows isn’t about impact in the same way. It’s about immersion.
The band ease into the set, opening with new material before letting the past flood in. Spaceman In Tulsa arrives early, a reminder that this isn’t just a nostalgia circuit. It sits comfortably alongside the older songs, like it’s always belonged there.
When Mr Jones lands third, the room shifts again. It’s not just recognition, it’s release. Voices rise instinctively, a full-theatre chorus that feels less like audience participation and more like collective ownership. These songs have travelled too far, lived too many lives, to belong solely to the band anymore.
Watching from just beyond the foyer, the physicality of the night becomes impossible to ignore. The heat from the crowd rolls outward in waves, a dense, living warmth emanating from bodies that are swaying to the music.
Adam Duritz moves between stillness and sudden bursts of animation, sitting on a bench one moment, lifting the mic stand out over the crowd the next. There’s very little between-song chatter. The band let the music do the talking, and it speaks loudly enough on its own terms.
Goodnight Elisabeth pulls the room inward, lights dimming as the band stretch the song into something expansive. A solo cuts clean through the centre before dissolving again, the band showing just how tight they are without ever feeling rigid.
Mid-set, Duritz pauses just long enough to frame With Love, From A – Z. He describes it as a song that maps his life, the hellos and the goodbyes stitched together across years on the road. He notes it’s the only track from the new album written in New York City, while the rest took shape on a friend’s farm in England. The context settles over the room, and when the song unfolds, it carries that sense of movement and memory with it.
There’s space in everything. Miami feels guided rather than played, Duritz conducting subtly as keys spill out in soft, tumbling runs. An acoustic solo from David Immerglück cuts through the quiet with clarity and restraint before the band gently swing into Washington Square, the theatre falling silent enough to feel every note land.
The acoustic turn for Angels of Silence reframes the song entirely. Stripped back, it becomes something more fragile, more exposed, harmonies sitting right at the surface. It’s the kind of moment that makes you aware of how much these songs can still shift.
Then the swell returns.
When Big Yellow Taxi lands, the mood lifts instantly. The crowd doesn’t hesitate, voices locking in from the first line, turning the song into a full-room singalong that feels effortless and communal rather than nostalgic.
Phones begin to glow across the theatre as Round Here emerges, a constellation of light rising with the opening lines. The singalong is immediate and total, the room leaning into every word before the band subtly morph the song into Raining In Baltimore. It’s a seamless shift, one song dissolving into another, the emotional current deepening rather than breaking.
Somewhere in the crowd, a voice cuts through — loud, committed and wildly off-key. When Duritz sings, “I need a phone call,” the reply comes back with unfiltered enthusiasm: “I need a fucking phone call.” It’s chaotic, imperfect, and somehow completely in step with the moment. This stretch of the set lands as a clear crowd favourite, messy and human in the best way.
During A Long December arms lift again, voices stretch upward, and guitarist Dan Vickrey steps forward with a solo that cuts clean and deliberate through the centre of it all, a reminder of just how much muscle sits beneath the band’s restraint.
Rain King breaks the spell open again, the band surging forward as the crowd claps along, Duritz holding the mic out once more, letting the room take control.
When the band return for their encore, Duritz steps up to the mic with a half-smile and a shrug of familiarity: “Here we go again,” and the room comes roaring back to life before the next note is played.
Under the Aurora, Hanginaround, and Holiday in Spain close the night with a looseness that feels earned rather than performed.
There’s no attempt to freeze anything in place. These songs have changed, just like the people singing them back. That’s what gives the night its weight.
At the Enmore Theatre, Counting Crows don’t just revisit the past. They let it breathe.
Counting Crows will visit Melbourne and Brisbane before returning to Sydney, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
