Before These Crowded Streets

About

By the end of 1997, the Dave Matthews Band had become unlikely hitmaker. The group’s globe-trotting acoustic rock—with songs about busy city street, existential anxiety, and secret sexual liaisons—had offered a peppy respite from the decade’s grunge. But after two popular albums and a ceaseless touring schedule, the group had run out of song, with Matthews having exhausted his early archive. So he retreated to a centuries-old mill in the Virginia foothills to revisit old scrap, and conjure new ones with any bandmates who dropped by—including bassist Stefan Lessard, who loved boom-bap and Radiohead. And so emerged the seeds of 1998’s <i>Before These Crowded Streets</i>, which would paradoxically become the most experimental and moody DMB album, and the one that certified the group’s superstar status—even sinking the <i>Titanic</i> soundtrack that had long dominated the chart. After recording its first two records in upstate New York with Steve Lillywhite, the band and the newly sober British producer decamped to the San Francisco Bay, using the legendary Record Plant as a creative playground. The resulting songs swung wildly, from the twisted horn funk of “Stay (Wasting Time)” and the lustful nods of the <i>über</i>-smooth “Crush” to the tormented plea for reckoning at the center of “Don’t Drink the Water.” As far as DMB releases go, <i>Before These Crowded Streets</i> is an album of true extremes—of limits tested and reset. .

via Apple Music

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