You know, the O’s just lost, I’m not going to make this night any worse by trying to come up with something to say about a damn Dave Matthews.
[Video][Website]
[2.71]
Katherine St Asaph: Spotify’s ads are interrupting my listening with excerpts of this. Never has a message fit so well its medium.
[2]
Iain Mew: Dave Matthews Band’s complete UK chart history: yes, one single and one album. They are a band that I read about sometimes and who can somehow sell out big venues even here, but I haven’t come into contact with their music in a decade and I’m not sure I’ve ever met a British Dave Matthews Band fan. My only memories of them are therefore of “The Space Between”. While “If Only” is very boring, there’s little to hate and it doesn’t feature the same horribly strained rock vocal, which is a small, pleasant surprise.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: You know the records filed under Easy Listening that don’t get touched by anyone except grandparents, trolling hipsters or weirdo omnivores? Dave Matthews is my generation’s Ray Conniff. In fifty years some curious kid will think “play” on their holographic iBrain and be surprised at the uncomplicated sweetness that everyone in the world has been rolling their eyes at for two generations.
[2]
Anthony Easton: You cannot have me, Dave Matthews, because you are patronizing and boring. Perhaps you cannot get this woman back because you are stalking her, and that is creepy. Your nice guy routine hides a profound sketchiness, Mr Matthews. I mean, I could write about the prosaic guitars, or the profound whine of the voice, but the staggering narcissism of this just makes that superfluous.
[1]
Brad Shoup: There has not yet been a successful way for fan or foe to talk about Dave Matthews Band, and so I must fail here. Some stray notes, then: the strummed riff is sluggish, as is the man himself, suddenly. His lechery routine elicits no smiles (knowing or pitying); the melodic nursery-rhyme suggestion is lazy; Jeff Coffin’s saxophone is barely there.
[4]
Josh Langhoff: “If only I could have you just the way I want you.” He’s not just a fool, but his doofusy sexism links this song back to “Crash Into Me,” when, mouth hanging open and eyes red, he begged the woman to hike up her skirt. The band plays a fair approximation of Willie Mitchell’s work with Al Green.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Six minutes of this complacent rue killed the grass outside my condo.
[1]