After flying high for a decade, Counting Crows reached a crossroads in late 2006, when singer Adam Duritz found himself in a downward spiral of rock star excess and overwhelming depression. Known as the emotive dreadlocked singer whose open-wound emotions fuel his creative ambitions in the studio and improvisational spirit onstage, Duritz was in bad shape. Not only was he unable or unwilling to seriously consider finishing the follow-up to 2002's "Hard Candy," but he questioned whether he wanted the band to continue at all.

"The writing got affected by the fact that I just hated the whole life," Duritz says. "It's just like, 'I'm tired of the record business.' I was tired of radio and the press and the degrading aspects of being famous. The entertainment industry is such a fucking cesspool. So I just, like, went on walkabout."

But at various times in the last year, including the initial sessions for what yielded the new Geffen album "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings," Duritz slowly emerged from a fog he blamed on various antidepressants. The semi-concept album, due this week, is divided between rock-driven songs and more acoustic-based material.

The former tracks find the band reunited with "Recovering the Satellites" producer Gil Norton (Pixies, Foo Fighters), while the latter songs were produced by Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine). "I didn't really know what I was going to do with the band," Duritz says. "I knew I had a record I wanted to make really badly, that I had at least one last thing to say."