Before These Crowded Streets
by Dave Matthews Band

From zdwyatt 01/09/2018 15:53 | #205074 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

After a couple of albums of bright, jazzy jams, this album is much darker. The addition of a greater variety of sounds makes this the closest thing they've done to a world music album. But it's still DMB: the average track length is just under seven minutes and the virtuoso playing still shines through. One of their best.

Favorite tracks: Stay (Wasting Time), The Stone, Rapunzel

DMB's 3rd album is darker, less accessible, more complex and musically more complicated than any other album they have.

Crush, Stay, Don't Drink the Water are classic DMB songs

Rapunzel and Last Stop are frenetic intense songs.

The 2 previous albums were high on whimsy and good times. Dave is angry here and charged up with political injustices.

This album proved that DMB are more technically skilled than a college jam band, but I don't listen to this album from beginning to end.

Halloween is uncomfortable; a growling groveling Dave Matthews is not pleasant on the ears. Great atmosphere for what he wants to convey but I don't want to hear it more than once

What comes after lacks hooks and is unmemorable.

I respect this offering more than like it.

First 2 album, Busted Stuff, and Groo Crux King are better albums.

The top 3 songs are keepers though on a DMB playlist.

From junodog4 10/19/2013 03:13 | #88833

Easily Dave Matthew's best.

From ProfessorSquid 04/28/2013 02:09 | #74632

Too long.

From drivebytornado 03/02/2013 05:00 | #66634 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

There are some great moments, and some boring moments, on this one. At 70 minutes, this could've been shaved into a much tighter album, not necessarily cutting songs, as they all have their moments, but trimming down the excess a bit.

But then it wouldn't exactly be a Dave Matthews Band album, would it?

From lightmyway 05/04/2012 23:33 | #41528 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This is a great and complex album. This is the first DMB studio album that sounded like it was made for the studio. Really fine stuff.

After making two great albums of upbeat party jam music, the DMB decided to get serious and somber. The album is brilliant from start to finish. Great music that compliments to tone of each of the songs. Musical interludes between many of the songs provide transitions to make this album a complete unified piece.

From Romanelli 05/21/2011 16:13 | #22055

A real, angry, politically charged and melodic album from Dave Matthews? Yep. This is worth the rest of his catalog put together. "Don;'t Drink The Water" is brilliant.

Sure, DMB can be prone to long-winded jams, but this album is suprisingly brilliant, with complex rhythms, good use of musical tension, and exotic time signatures (The Dreaming Tree is in 7/8).