DAVE MATTHEWS BAND”Crash”RCA* * 1/2One of the...

DAVE MATTHEWS BAND

“Crash”

RCA

* * 1/2

One of the fast-multiplying flock of outfits that kick it like a poppier Grateful Dead, the Dave Matthews Band hit triple platinum with its debut blend of American-roots riffs and global grooves.

This album’s title points to a new Dave Matthews Band: a trio that rocks more abrasively and a singer who bristles every now and then. While Matthews is hardly a seething bundle of vitriol, such ball-and-chain-busting anthems as “Drive in Drive Out” and “So Much to Say” suggest that he has been feeling edgy lately.

Matthews mostly fuels “Crash” with the same sultry, loose-limbed offering of polyrhythmic, jazzy fusion that made ‘94’s “Under the Table and Dreaming” palatable, unchallenging, boomer-perfect rock. Matthews and company continue their saxophone honks, percussion dazzle and distinctive vocal jive talk.

But “Crash” reveals a less snappy, more unsettling side of the band, from the opening lines (“I see my hell as the closet I’m stuck inside, can’t see the light”) to the melancholy ache of its instrumentals. Although this occasionally saps the globe-trotting jams of their footloose spirit, there’s still enough good, bluesy work here to ensure that young Matthews will continue carrying the torch lit by Jerry Garcia.

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