TORONTO - It's hard not to appreciate -- however grudgingly -- the success of any band who can pull nearly 2,000 warm bodies into a venue like the Warehouse, with hardly a shred of advance press. It's tricky to pooh-pooh a group whose record has reached gold status -- 50,000 copies sold -- two weeks after its release. But Counting Crows, who achieved both last night, made it easy during their sold-out show at the Queen's Quay echo-chamber. That is to say, the San Francisco sextet put on a show so predictable it fed the expectations of fans and detractors alike. Much of that has to do with the persona of frontman and chief-songwriter Adam Duritz, who could be pop's ultimate either-you-get-him-or-you-don't performer. Duritz is best known to the masses as the bartender-turned-singer with the receding dreadlocks who dated Courteney Cox a while back. This isn't particularly fair. Duritz has smash hits like 1993's Mr. Jones and 1996's A Long December under his belt, and he's a more idiosyncratic showman than his band's easy-rock reputation may suggest -- which isn't saying much. There is, however, something remarkable about him: Rarely do you see a singer so overpowered by the sheer blandness of his own band (though Hootie & The Blowfish sort of cornered the market on that in the mid-'90s). His voice has never been the group's strong-suit, even though their suitably titled new album This Desert Life captures his best writing to date. Counting Crows were so neutral last night that, for all his eccentric muttering and arm-flapping, Duritz could neither pull the show down nor fire it up. From an opening run-through of Mr. Jones to crowd-pleasing takes on new tracks like Four Days and All My Friends, the band members were in third-gear and they stayed there, coasting down the middle of the road. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But even with workable harmonies and tidy playing, the group still sounded like a third-rate jangle band, while Duritz staggered and gestured like a slightly self-conscious drama student. He did spice things up a bit by revealing, with the infectious excitement of someone falling in new love, that he's seeing a woman from Toronto (and no, I doubt he says that to all the cities). The band also threw in a rare version of the tune Monkey, from their last album Recovering The Satellites, and I Wish I Was A Girl, which turned out to be so long-winded even Duritz had to crack wise. "We're disgustingly peaceful on stage tonight," he said, bemused. "What's going on?" A disgustingly tense night might be just what the doctor ordered.