Relix

Review by Mike Greenhaus

Despite being the first Dave Matthews Band studio album in four years, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King will forever be known as the last record to feature LeRoi Moore. The saxophonist’s ghost haunts the entire disc-from its title, to the classic sounding Moore solo that leads into the album’s primary track. It’s an eerie reminder that Dave Matthews Band-the poster child for the suburban late’90s-has now outlasted both its generation and its breezy, innocent you and now finds itself in the precarious position of being a cultural institution somewhat lost in time.

Like its predecessor. Stand Up, the 13-track collection is tailored to sound like a classic DMB record, mixing show-stopping rave-ups (the brass heavy “Shake Me Like a Monkey”) with more sensitive moments (the piano and strings-lace “Dive In”) and few worldly excursions (the genre-shifting “Time Bomb,” which opens with some pleasant guitar plucks and ends with one too many apocalyptic screams). It is a big, thick sounding record designed to permeate the arena that Matthews has frequented for well over a decade. Throughout, the group’s core lineup is bolstered by the expanding touring bank that helps fill those big room-guitarist Time Reynolds, saxophonist Jeff Coffin and trumpeter Rashawn Ross, as well as guests like banjo-ace Danny Barnes. But, unlike Everyday, Matthews’ most direct attempt at radio success, Big Whiskey still feels like the product of a working band-albeit one occasionally too polished with studio sickness.

As expected, the bands best numbers are its most subtle, such as the inspired, reflective “Lying in the Hands of God,” which recalls Matthews’ accomplished 2003 solo album Some Devil. The problem is that new songs such as the loose, jazzy and almost funky potential single, “Spaceman,” are neither as invited as the group’s catchiest hits, nor as experimental as the band’s more adventurous moments-familiar at best, formulaic at worst.

Original Article