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.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
It's A Mad Life
Okay, June 1st, close enough to summer to do my first Album a Day. This is what I hope will become one of my regular things here. The plan is to dig out an album from my music library, and listen to the whole thing from start to finish and write about it. Not so much as just reviewing the album, but getting into it a little deeper with what was going on in life when it was heavy rotation for me, or what it wound up meaning to me in the long run.
Today we looking at "Opaline," by Dishwalla. Yeah, kind of a one-hit wonder band with the "Counting Blue Cars" thing, but a friend who is as obsessive about music as I am introduced me to the rest of their stuff, and they turned out to be a really great band. In fact, he sent me a copy of Opaline just because he loved it so much and figured this was going to be the way he'd finally get me to crack and give the band a chance. Thing was I'd already bought it on my own, so for awhile I had two copies of it on my CD rack. I'm not sure where the second copy ever wound up -- I think I passed it on to someone when I was getting ready to move, but I'm not sure who.
Dishwalla seems to be on hiatus now, but their singer, a dude named J.R. Richards, just released a solo album last month. I found it on iTunes and like it quite a bit. Today at school I was in kind of a subdued, comfortable mood that is found on this new album, so my head drifted toward trying to replay the songs from it. The problem is that I don't know this album well enough yet to bring one up on the internal radio on command. Instead, I wound up using songs from Opaline as a substitute, since the two albums have such a similar tone.
Opaline is noteable for two big reasons: It was a car CD for me one spring, after one Sunday I was driving around with it in the car, and it was during that drive that I got my first real hard listen to how cool of a CD it was. I was on the way to see one of my students perform in an ice show at the local ice arena. Ice shows are analogous with dance recitals when it comes to how painful they are to sit through, so I wasn't really looking forward to it. But hey, she invited, and I've always figured if one of the kids wants you at their event badly enough they'll muster up the courage to invite you, it's worth my time to go if I'm able. Makes me a little heroic for awhile, and gives me a glimpse into the personal lives of students I don't normally get, which helps me to see them more as people than just names in the gradebook. It was late spring, one of the first days of the season it was warm enough for it to make sense to roll down the car windows and enjoy the breeze.
Opaline never caught on big with me after it's turn in the car; it really just got overlooked in the shuffle. But a couple years later I downloaded Dishwalla's live album, "Greetings From the Flow State," which was awesome. Probably still my favorite CD of theirs. And one big reason why was they had taken some really strong songs from Opaline and reworked them to create similar but brand new live versions that I just loved. It was enough to get me to dig Opaline out and enjoy the more calm and acoustic-flavored versions of these same songs.
Why an adult-oriented rock station like Cities 97 wasn't all over this album when it first came out is beyond me. It was right up their alley, and the thing just faded away. If you're ever looking for a new relaxing-under-the-sunset soundtrack album, give this one a shot.
Today we looking at "Opaline," by Dishwalla. Yeah, kind of a one-hit wonder band with the "Counting Blue Cars" thing, but a friend who is as obsessive about music as I am introduced me to the rest of their stuff, and they turned out to be a really great band. In fact, he sent me a copy of Opaline just because he loved it so much and figured this was going to be the way he'd finally get me to crack and give the band a chance. Thing was I'd already bought it on my own, so for awhile I had two copies of it on my CD rack. I'm not sure where the second copy ever wound up -- I think I passed it on to someone when I was getting ready to move, but I'm not sure who.
Dishwalla seems to be on hiatus now, but their singer, a dude named J.R. Richards, just released a solo album last month. I found it on iTunes and like it quite a bit. Today at school I was in kind of a subdued, comfortable mood that is found on this new album, so my head drifted toward trying to replay the songs from it. The problem is that I don't know this album well enough yet to bring one up on the internal radio on command. Instead, I wound up using songs from Opaline as a substitute, since the two albums have such a similar tone.
Opaline is noteable for two big reasons: It was a car CD for me one spring, after one Sunday I was driving around with it in the car, and it was during that drive that I got my first real hard listen to how cool of a CD it was. I was on the way to see one of my students perform in an ice show at the local ice arena. Ice shows are analogous with dance recitals when it comes to how painful they are to sit through, so I wasn't really looking forward to it. But hey, she invited, and I've always figured if one of the kids wants you at their event badly enough they'll muster up the courage to invite you, it's worth my time to go if I'm able. Makes me a little heroic for awhile, and gives me a glimpse into the personal lives of students I don't normally get, which helps me to see them more as people than just names in the gradebook. It was late spring, one of the first days of the season it was warm enough for it to make sense to roll down the car windows and enjoy the breeze.
Opaline never caught on big with me after it's turn in the car; it really just got overlooked in the shuffle. But a couple years later I downloaded Dishwalla's live album, "Greetings From the Flow State," which was awesome. Probably still my favorite CD of theirs. And one big reason why was they had taken some really strong songs from Opaline and reworked them to create similar but brand new live versions that I just loved. It was enough to get me to dig Opaline out and enjoy the more calm and acoustic-flavored versions of these same songs.
Why an adult-oriented rock station like Cities 97 wasn't all over this album when it first came out is beyond me. It was right up their alley, and the thing just faded away. If you're ever looking for a new relaxing-under-the-sunset soundtrack album, give this one a shot.
Too Early for a Quality Title
It's 6:30 A.M. I once read that Steven Tyler of Aerosmith said he likes to write early in the morning, since his head hasn't completely cleared away the disorientation of sleep and being in that state allows for more creativity. Based on the dozen or so times I've tried it, I will back him up on early morning writing often turning out to be very different. Not sure about more creative, but certainly more bizarre.
Today is June 1st, and with the turning of the calendar to this new page comes a more tangible embrace of the upcoming summer. To celebrate, as I have done for at least the past eight or so years, I'm sitting here with iTunes on making sure the first song I hear this month is "June" by Spock's Beard, a song with lyrics that to this day I still don't completely understand, but puts me in mind of a summer evening graced with a pleasantly warm breeze nonetheless. (I'll credit Steven Tyler for that sentence being more blatantly descriptive and grammatically dubious than anything I would have tried past noon.)
I had Bomani harpin' on me last night about being grateful for all the time off I get in the summer. Trust me, my man -- it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The simple glorious fact of it is that sitting here at forty-one years old, my life since the last day of school in kindergarten back in 1974 has always had a summer vacation. Sure, I had to work some of those in the high school / college years, but it was still drugstore / Boys and Girls Club work, so it was still vacation. And now, knowing that I could literally choose to sit on my couch in front of the XBox for two straight weeks and still have a paycheck show up in my mailbox? Life is good.
Except.... I can't be true to myself if I don't complain about something. Since it's early, I'm going off on one of my alarm clocks. I have two of them, you see. The old reliable standby sits well out of reach of my bed so I have to actually stand and walk to turn the thing off. This one is the truer of the two alarm clocks since it's set to go off twenty minutes later than the first one. It would even start up playing a CD if I wanted it to, but for my purposes the unholy electronic bird-chirp-of-death is more effective. Now, the OTHER alarm clock is the one I have issues with. Right beside my bed, and you'd think this would be the favored son of alarm clocks since I can dock my iPod right into the top. But NO! First of all, the thing loses about four minutes every month. How that happens with such consistency I have no idea. Secondly, the control buttons on the top? I've played slot machines with more reliability. If I just want to turn on the radio for some music to fall asleep to, I have to push the "radio" button at least eight times before the thing will understand what I'm going for. Once out of frustration I literally gave up and pressed a different button randomly, and it actually worked. If I try to set the time, it will either switch to the AM tuner or shut off. If I try to set the sleep timer, it will start flashing the alarm time at me, waiting for a new setting.
Thankfully in a mere two more weeks I won't be needing it at all....
Today is June 1st, and with the turning of the calendar to this new page comes a more tangible embrace of the upcoming summer. To celebrate, as I have done for at least the past eight or so years, I'm sitting here with iTunes on making sure the first song I hear this month is "June" by Spock's Beard, a song with lyrics that to this day I still don't completely understand, but puts me in mind of a summer evening graced with a pleasantly warm breeze nonetheless. (I'll credit Steven Tyler for that sentence being more blatantly descriptive and grammatically dubious than anything I would have tried past noon.)
I had Bomani harpin' on me last night about being grateful for all the time off I get in the summer. Trust me, my man -- it does not go unnoticed or unappreciated. The simple glorious fact of it is that sitting here at forty-one years old, my life since the last day of school in kindergarten back in 1974 has always had a summer vacation. Sure, I had to work some of those in the high school / college years, but it was still drugstore / Boys and Girls Club work, so it was still vacation. And now, knowing that I could literally choose to sit on my couch in front of the XBox for two straight weeks and still have a paycheck show up in my mailbox? Life is good.
Except.... I can't be true to myself if I don't complain about something. Since it's early, I'm going off on one of my alarm clocks. I have two of them, you see. The old reliable standby sits well out of reach of my bed so I have to actually stand and walk to turn the thing off. This one is the truer of the two alarm clocks since it's set to go off twenty minutes later than the first one. It would even start up playing a CD if I wanted it to, but for my purposes the unholy electronic bird-chirp-of-death is more effective. Now, the OTHER alarm clock is the one I have issues with. Right beside my bed, and you'd think this would be the favored son of alarm clocks since I can dock my iPod right into the top. But NO! First of all, the thing loses about four minutes every month. How that happens with such consistency I have no idea. Secondly, the control buttons on the top? I've played slot machines with more reliability. If I just want to turn on the radio for some music to fall asleep to, I have to push the "radio" button at least eight times before the thing will understand what I'm going for. Once out of frustration I literally gave up and pressed a different button randomly, and it actually worked. If I try to set the time, it will either switch to the AM tuner or shut off. If I try to set the sleep timer, it will start flashing the alarm time at me, waiting for a new setting.
Thankfully in a mere two more weeks I won't be needing it at all....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)