Nearly 10 years on from their epic debut album August and Everything After, Counting Crows aren't at the cutting edge of fashion - but they have subtler, longer-lasting qualities. Not least, they have built up one of those "silent majority" audiences, which remains incognito until the band blows into town, then suddenly materialises en masse. Tonight's show sold out so quickly that a second was quickly added at Brixton Academy. All the tickets for that one also vanished within minutes.

Hence, band and audience enjoy an unusually comfortable rapport. The crowd sang along lustily to old favourites such as Omaha and Rain King, to the delight of beefy, dreadlocked vocalist Adam Duritz. They even seemed to know all the words to the Crows' new single, American Girls, a scintillating zephyr of chiming harmony-pop that has never been anywhere near a house DJ or a Belgian remixer.

The seven-piece Crows are a throwback to the days when a rock group used to be a mirror for its broader community of followers, and the longer the show went on, the looser both band and punters became. When they started knocking out covers of songs by Teenage Fanclub and Pure Prairie League and threw in a version of Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi, it would have seemed only natural if the road crew had set up a bar on stage to keep the wheels oiled while they played through until dawn.

A bit of new-album plugging was unavoidable, though mostly pleasurable. Miami throbbed meatily like a miniature U2. New Frontier clipped along over a bouncing guitar riff, while a synthesiser burbled drunkenly overhead. Black and Blue was mostly blue, a pensive ballad taken at funereal pace.

For a finale, they whooshed back in time to Round Here, from the debut album. The audience sang this one too, but Duritz gave them the slip by veering off into Come Pick Me Up, by his buddy Ryan Adams. You can tell a lot about a band by the company they keep.

· At Brixton Academy, London SW9 (020-7771 2000), Sunday, and Bristol Academy (0870 771 2000), Monday.