Dave Matthews Band - Before These Crowded Streets

South African native Dave Matthews formed his band in Virginia in the early 1990s, gaining a large fan base with constant college tours. Although musically rooted in live performance, the band's acoustic rock is colored with jazz and world-music influences, making for a mix that's difficult to pin down.
The Dave Matthews Band moves its music forward by increments on Before These Crowded Streets. While the album offers more of the folkish melodies and vaguely internationalist rhythms that made this Charlottesville, Virginia, group a major record and concert draw, it also finds them adding new colorings to the mix. Alanis Morissette guests on two cuts, "Spoon" and the disc's first single, "Don't Drink the Water," and banjo whiz Bela Fleck sits in, too. More interesting, though, is the modernist string arrangement played by the Kronos Quartet on the driving "Halloween." Matthews's obvious hopes to lead something other than a jam band are at least partly fulfilled here; at the same time, Streets should keep his customers satisfied.

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