Eleven official live albums in one discography is an awful lot, but
Dave Matthews manages to throw a few surprises in on 2010’s
Live in New York City. A double-album capturing their second night at their July 2010 stint at Citi Field, this finds
DMB downplaying their big hits -- the biggest here is the ballad “Crash into Me” -- in favor of moody selections from deep in his catalog, including songs from
Matthews’ 2003 solo album
Some Devil. This lends the performance a meditative quality unusual for such a large setting -- even the extended numbers (five songs clock in over ten minutes, two of them over 15) don’t dig deep so much as float, the improvisations relying on texture instead of groove. It’s a subtle difference, one that matters only to the dedicated, but it does mean that
Live in New York City winds up with a different flavor than its ten predecessors.