The King Arrives

The new Dave Matthews Band album “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King” was released today, and I went and picked it up after school. It’s almost impossible to evaluate this album out of context if you’re familiar with that context, which is evident from the very first note. But that’s what I’m going to try to do. Here are my unfiltered reactions to the album, broken down by song, upon the first time I listened to it:

Grux: Cool little meandering opener. Not the big intro song you normally expect an album to start with.

Shake Me Like A Monkey: Horns have a 70s funk feel. Harder guitar, harder voice coming from Dave. I like the combination of those two sounds.

Funny The Way It Is: The lead single I’m told, though I haven’t heard it before. At first impression the lyrics sound like an average high school kid’s idea of thought-provoking. Musically it sounds very much like up tempo DMB, but with a sad tinge to it.

Lying in The Hands of God: Slower, quieter, smoother, looser, still driven into a jam by the drums. Dave singing with a bit of a falsetto, or at least pushing to the higher end of his range. Really cool acoustic guitar solo in the middle.

Why I Am: A bit faster, more riff-based than most of the DMB-type jam songs. Some pretty cool time-change interruptions along the way.

Dive In: So far the slowest moment on the album. Again, kind of sad, and again, the drums pick it up in the slower parts. Cool electric guitar solo in the middle, very flowing with pure tones. I’m wondering if this was Tim Reynolds playing.

Spaceman: One of those DMB songs when Dave sings kind of fast and doesn’t really enunciate that clearly, so if you don’t know the lyrics pretty well you’re going to have a tough time following them, except when he ends a phrase a little more slowly. That I’m mentioning the singing more here should tell you the music is kind of unremarkable. Except for a little ??? out of nowhere when a banjo starts a-pluckin’ in the last 5 seconds.

Squirm: It starts slow and gentle, and at first I thought it was a mistake to put two similar songs next to each other, but this one brightens and opens up into more of an anthem in the middle. Still can’t follow the lyrics. The last twenty seconds sound like Dave got a little too stoned, found an old empty coffee can in some corner of the studio, took it into rest room stall and sang to it.

Alligator Pie: More banjo, in fact this one starts out driven by the banjo until the rest of the band catches up and builds on. Big time change in the middle, and slowing the song down for a little actually gives it some thump.

Seven: This song starts with the loudest and most obvious guitars of any DMB song I can think of. While it keeps the momentum of the previous song, it’s pretty strong and heavy on it’s own as well. One of those great sections in the middle where there’s just so much going on musically that you can barely separate the instruments and tell what each one is doing.

Time Bomb: You can’t fault DMB for having nothing but happy songs. The lyrics (whoa! F-bomb there!) sound pretty dark, and the music, quiet and minor, slowly starts building into something more but then backs off. When it builds back up it does so for good, with a horn/guitar combination that has real beef to it. As the power builds in the music, the darkness of the lyrics and the anger in Dave’s voice keep pace. This one is pretty cool.

Baby Blue: Some real nice acoustic guitar work on this. No drums, which adds more to the song than detracts from it. A lot of fluid strings filling in the background. Without having looked at the lyrics, it seems to play somewhere between a love song and a lullaby.

You & Me: A nice relaxed album closer. It starts with some cool strumming and comes to life in the chorus. Very much a love song about about the happiness and strength of two people being together.... and then they go and spoil it with one of those stupid “uncredited” endings, where the song keeps on playing for another minute or so before there’s one last coda inserted out of nowhere, and one that in this case has nothing at all musical to do with the song preceding it on the track. Though all things considered in the context of this album being made, it was a very understandable and move.