Posted on 06/12/2009
Almost twenty years old, Dave Matthews Band has managed to become one of the top touring pop/rock acts of the last ten years, and has done it without a string of top ten hits (their well-known “Crash Into Me” is what, thirteen years old now?), their following built on live searching solos, pleasantly danceable jam-outs, and their sweetly charming, sometimes inconsistent studio albums.

At their best, their songs evoke sprites of acoustic African folk guitar dancing between the syncopated rhythm section, while the arching, contemplative saxophone and the brooding, near-gothic violins float above. The last time this type of thing was leveraged throughout an album was the haunting and foggy sessions of Steve Lillywhite (Joan Armatrading, U2’s War) ten years ago. Since then the songs came taut, clear, yet needlessly subdued (ho-hum singles “The Space Between” and “Dreamgirl,” for example), the albums faring no much better.

“Why I Am,” the best song on their latest, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, is the sound of a band re-focused: bassist Stefan Lessard and drummer Carter Beauford provide a thickly braced rhythm, Boyd Tinsley’s violin quick and accenting, while guitarist/vocalist Dave Matthews provides great riffs and one of the best choruses of his career. But it is the blasts and runs of saxophonist Leroi Moore (1962-2008) on this song and throughout the album that brings even more color, his final performances spliced into the winter sessions like an ol’ Teo Marcero/Miles Davis classic by producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, My Chemical Romance).

This new immediacy is found mostly in the middle of the album. “Alligator Pie (Cockadile)” is a rocking, aggressive-sounding, banjo-fried stomp, Dave singing about the South, the night-time jam and devils, that then breaks down into a cock-sure strut. With “Squirm,” the band is even more epic, drums and strings swirling the pathos in a way we haven’t heard since Matthews’ solo album Some Devil, and on “Time Bomb,” he sounds inconsolable and confused in the horns, as he finally screams “hammer in the final nail, I want to believe in Jesus.”

The album’s softer songs, “Dive In” and closer “You and Me” distract more than compliment, and Dave’s lyrics are too basic and tepid at times. And while these ingrained habits deeply affected the quality of the band’s latter-decade offerings, they do not do much to abrogate the final intent on this album --songs about the half-life of friendship; the constant change, and the warm, arresting fun found in the whiskey.

- Chris White