Dave Matthews Band: Before These Crowded Streets

Dave Matthews Band's jazzy, busy pop-rock is adored and reviled in equal measures: Some love the quirky voice and undeniable musicianship, while others find the Virginia group's songs to be alternately shrill and bland. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle, but the new Before These Crowded Streets won't do much to silence the band's critics: For every elegant moment or breezy hook, there are two or three lumbering, disjointed, overlong messes like the wheezy "Rapunzel" and the grunting, squawking "The Last Stop." It doesn't help that the group closes many of these songs with windy jams, but listening to tracks like the chirpy, saccharine "Stay (Wasting Time)," it's clear that restraint isn't really Dave Matthews Band's specialty. Matthews can be a compelling singer, but on "Halloween" and the closing moments of "Don't Drink The Water," he's imitating the menacing mannerisms of a thousand tortured alterna-rock bleaters, and the results are awfully difficult to endure. (That's saying nothing of the uncanny Peter Gabriel imitations peppered throughout the album.) Before These Crowded Streets occasionally gets it right: "The Stone" is moody and multilayered, Alanis Morissette supplies some solid guest vocals to two tracks, and the languid "The Dreaming Tree" is a passable sequel to what is probably Dave Matthews Band's finest song, the melancholy smash ballad "Satellite." But mostly, Before These Crowded Streets is just an overblown disappointment.