I am still a little angry, making the title of this post a little bit misleading. However, I thought that it would be nice to get a real review of the album on hear rather than just my rants about how I couldn't rip it to my computer, which made me collectively angry at Itunes/RCA/Dave Matthews and his band.
But on to the actual review of the music. After listening through several times at this point and talking it over with a few people, I will give the album a 3 out of 5. The music itself is really well done and I thouroughly enjoy the music portion of the disc that The Dave Matthews Band wrote.
What I am not especially fond of is the fact that the producer decided that what was really missing in all of the DMB music was Sampling, Loops and synth. I have never once thought to myself while listening to a Dave song that it was really lacking something. Even when Everyday came out and it was different I didn't really hate it, but it did take a little time to grow on me. The fact is that DMB has never really done anything like this before. There is a 3 minute section of a 7 minute song that is all looping and synth. There is claps that were sampled and are repeated. There is a drum sample to intro a song that doesn't even match with the beginning of the song, it is just there to be there.
I refer back to Everyday to give a little bit of perspective of where I am coming from. When that album came out, many people didn't like it because, "It doesn't/didn't sound like a Dave album." I never really thought that because that was about the time that I really started listening to Dave and didn't really have an opinion of it yet, but I liked it. I didn't like as much as the other albums, but it was good. Now this new album, Stand Up, is being compared to Everyday in that people are saying that the band has changed. It is my opinion that the band has not changed. They hired a producer and went along with his suggestions. I happen to not like what the producer incorporated into the music.
It is a listenable album, but I suggest that you skip over the shit part of every song.