Counting Crows may have titled their upcoming third studio album This Desert Life, but on most of the album's songs, lead singer/songwriter Adam Duritz sounds more like he's floating above the Los Angeles wasteland instead of an arid Sahara.

"Well, I know I don't know you/ And you're probably not what you seem/ Oh, but I'd sure like to find out/ So why don't you climb down off of that movie screen," he sings on the nearly eight-minute "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby."

The piano-driven, mid-'70s-style California folk-rock tune is one of several on the album, due Nov. 2, in which the 35-year-old dreadlocked singer offers a bird's-eye view of his adopted home town. Mixing metaphors about the California dream and the allure of Hollywood's escapist stories, Duritz sings, "If dreams are like movies/ Then memories are films about ghosts/ You can never escape, you can only move south down the coast."

The lines make perfect sense, considering the album was recorded in a home high in the hills above Hollywood that the band rented for a year with co-producer and Cracker leader David Lowery.

"I love that we never got out of this [house]," Duritz said in July at Woodstock '99 about the open-ended sessions for the album. Although the group has followed a similar recording pattern on its two previous albums, this time Duritz said the band didn't even leave home to finish mixing This Desert Life, which he said gave him a greater sense of continuity.

With no time constraints, the group was free to spend more time embellishing the tracks, adding generous touches of piano and organ as well as lush classical string sections on a number of songs.

This Desert Life — the studio follow-up to Recovering the Satellites (1996), their double-platinum sophomore album — bears the influence of everything from '70s California rock acts such as the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles to rock poet Bob Dylan and arty folk-rockers R.E.M. The 10-track album also continues Duritz's lyrical fascination with characters in search of themselves and love.

"I've been hangin' around this town corner/ I've been bumming around this old town for way too long," Duritz sings pleadingly in the album's bouncy first single, "hanginaround" (RealAudio excerpt), which recently went to radio. Along with the R.E.M.-like country-rock tune "Four Days," the single is one of the few uptempo songs on an album with its fair share of melancholy laments.

In the piano-driven ballad "Amy Hit the Atmosphere," Duritz sings about one of several characters yearning to escape their life.

"If I could make it rain today/ And wash away this sunny day down to the gutter/ I would/ Just to get a change of pace/ Things are getting worse but I feel a lot better," he sings in an off-cadence delivery. The soaring chorus later gives way to a brief, dizzying psychedelic interlude filled with the sound of sitars, bells and dozens of Duritzes singing in harmony.

The ghostly, midtempo "Speedway" combines the dual themes of Los Angeles life and dreams of escape. "Sometimes I sit here looking down upon Los Angeles/ Sometimes floating away," Duritz sings in his keening voice.

"[Keyboardist] Charlie [Gillingham] really was creative with the keyboard sounds," Duritz said following his band's set at Woodstock '99. "We tried layering vocals and mellotrons, trumpets and strings, any kind of weird sound we could think of until we found the right combination that worked and used that. We plucked piano strings from the inside at one point to get a kind of harp sound."

Gillingham's experimentation is pushed to the fore on the

classical-piano-like intro to the melancholy "Colorblind," which features uncharacteristically elliptical lyrics from Duritz that sound more like poetry than his usual storytelling style.

The band, which formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1991, also includes guitarists David Bryson and Dan Vickrey, bassist Matt Malley and drummer Ben Mize. Counting Crows' debut, August and Everything After (1993), sold more than 5 million copies on the strength of the jangly pop tune "Mr. Jones" (RealAudio excerpt), while Recovering the Satellites launched such hits as "A Long December" (RealAudio excerpt).

The group released a live album, Across a Wire: Live in New York, in 1998, which featured such songs as "A Murder of One" (RealAudio excerpt of live version), recorded from a 1997 show at the Hammerstein Ballroom.

The new album also features the jazzy, swing-laden rock tunes "All My Friends" and "High Life," as well as the moody midtempo ballad "I Wish I Was a Girl" and the bouncy, uptempo closer "St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream."

"I think it's a little more joyful album than the other ones have been," Duritz said. "It's a little less heavy in its mood as well. There's a little more yearnings that are a little more upbeat, tinged with possibility of getting what you yearn for" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).