Nearly three years after the release of Before These Crowded Streets, their last full-length studio album, the Dave Matthews Band has returned. But if you’re expecting to see what the band has created, you’re in for a disappointment. Everyday is all about Dave.

The music world often claims that what makes a great album or a great artist is one who successfully pushes the envelope of the existing music. What happens, then, when artists transcend their own unique sound?

The DMB is trademarked for its full-band, instrumental sound. Classically trained violinist Boyd Tinsley isn’t on stage for the sake of accompaniment but as a part of a whole.

More often than not, multi-instrument bands inadvertently translate into the backup band for a solo artist. The band’s name alone suggests a focus on its lead guitarist and singer Dave Matthews, but in the past this has not been the case.

However, in Everyday the group has placed Matthews in the spotlight. Sure, he’s got an electric guitar now and the lyrics alone could be published as poetry, but where’s Tinsley, your bass prodigy Stefan Lessard and the cool saxophonist in the shades?

Drummer Carter Beauford provides a beat base for Matthews’ guitar and voice mixed with a synthesized melody in the opening tracks. Aside from a cameo appearance, the distinct “full band sound” doesn’t appear until the fifth track, “So Right.” But even then, the distinct horn from Leroi Moore sneaks out for the ear that’s listening for it.

As the radio release “I Did It” foreshadowed, Everyday is different. It’s an interesting album that grows on you; but it grows well. As anticipated, and perhaps feared by the jam-band’s fans, the switch in producers from Steve Lillywhite to Los Angeles-based Glen Ballard has resulted in a produced sound.

Had Everyday been the band’s first album, there’d be nothing special about it, because frankly, aside from Matthews’ voice, it sounds like everything else out there.

Shows would most likely not be selling out amphitheaters and stadiums across the country, and there wouldn’t be a fan base running out to snatch the new album on its release date.

But, this isn’t the case for the DMB. They’ve been around, and they’ve got room to try something new. The album does maintain some distinctly familiar sounds. However, the familiarity simply isn’t as frequent as before.

The 10th track, “Sleep to Dream Her,” one of the album’s ballads resonates with words from Hamlet: “to sleep perchance to dream-ay, there’s the rub /For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.” Shakespeare is verse and Matthews’ lyrics alike appeal to the beauty of the dream world.

Perhaps it is in this dream world that the beauty of the new album lies. Everyday doesn’t have a love-at-first-sight flavor to it, but it does suggest the beginnings a lifelong appreciation that only the DMB deserves to have. B