"Dave Matthews Band - Before These Crowded Streets"

I always feel the slightest bit wrong for listening to the Dave Matthews Band. They're one of those bands I started listening to when I was a freshman in college and going through that "Oh, I'm a college boy, I should listen to college boy music!" phase that would come to haunt my dreams a couple of years later. DMB is one of my guilty pleasures (though I never really liked Creed. One song, that's it, and only for like a couple of weeks. Then I came to my senses. No one can prove I ever owned one of their CDs, especially since I got rid of the evidence years ago. You can't prove a thing!).

Anyway, Before These Crowded Streets was the first Dave Matthews CD I picked up. Initially it was for the single, "Stay (Wasting Time)," which I later discovered was not actually the best song on the album or at all representative of the sort of songs that appeared on the disc.

What struck me about this album (but not about any of their others--this one is really quite different in a lot of respects than their previous or succeeding efforts) was the epic feel of most of the songs. They were like Pink Floyd, in that they were crafting these long, winding songs full of texture, substance, and bizzare imagery. There are moments of this sort of thing on their other albums--"Lie in Our Graves" from Crash, for instance--but here was an entire album of prog-rockesque tunes with faint worldbeat undertones, prominent saxophone and violin parts, and mostly acoustic guitar (though Tim Reynolds's guest electric guitar work highlights the music perfectly and fits as though he were a regular member of the band...which he might as well have been for the first two or three DMB records).

The music on Crowded Streets finds the band in fine form, weaving various disparate musical styles, instrumentation, and themes into a wonderful tapestry of sound. It's sonically dense, a real wall of sound combining layer upon layer of instrumentation that all blends together into one big sound. This actually works quite well--the band sound like one instrument, in a way.

Lyrically, the record is a little weak. Matthews isn't the greatest lyricist ever, relying more on the groove and the feel of the music and the general sense of words to get him through. DMB is a jam band at heart, and the lyrics sound half-improvised (even if they were developed and written well before the songs were recorded). This gives them a half-finished feel sometimes, though there are moments when it works ("Pig" and "Spoon" are excellent examples of the lyrics really gelling). When it fails, though, you get the almost stream-of-consciouness "The Dreaming Tree," which isn't a particularly bad song. It's not a particularly interesting song, either, and that's kind of the problem: at almost 9.00 minutes, it drags on longer than it has any reason to.

Overall, though, Crowded Streets is an excellent album. Once you realize that Matthews treats vocals as simply another instrument in the weave, the lack of true lyrical depth is less painful. And the songs themselves are, for the most part, interesting and entertaining. "Rapunzel" has a fun stop-and-go rhythm to it; "The Last Stop" mixes in an eastern flavor that works very well; "Crush" has a wonderful bridge element and tune that just sticks in your head; and the aforementioned "Pig" and "Spoon" are fun, well-crafted songs. The latter even features a guest vocal from Alanis Morrisette (who also provides some backing vocals on "Don't Drink the Water") to great effect. The only real missteps are "The Dreaming Tree" and "Halloween," and they're more flubs than out and out terrible songs.

Really, despite their frat rock tradition/label, Dave Matthews Band cranked out an excellent album in Before These Crowded Streets. While I can't stand most of their work, and their live albums bore me to tears (something which would probably drive a "true" fan up the wall--the whole point of DMB is their live show jam experience, or something like that), Crowded Streets manages to capture their energy, adventurousness, skill, and musicianship. Though it may not be the easiest album to dig into--most of the songs are rather long, with only a couple falling below the 6.00 minute mark; and the songs and music itself are all rather dense and inaccessable--the record ultimately offers up quite a lot in terms of worthwhile music.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Dave Matthews Band, "Crush"