The Globe and Mail

Review by Brad Wheeler

Known for its huge, grooving live music, the Dave Matthews Band finds focus on its latest studio album, a deep-bottomed disc that salutes late saxophonist LeRoi Moore not only with its title (Moore, who died after an ATV accident, was nicknamed the GrooGrux King), but its reflective and occasionally dark spiritual bent. Lying in the Hands of God is fluid and hazy, with some beautifully orchestrated jamming. Why I Am is rousing and theatrical, and top track Dive In goes for a minor-key dancing-at-the-end of-the-world vibe. Where the album fails is lyrically: On the impossible-to-hum single Funny the Way It Is, Matthews gives us, “Standing on a bridge, watch the water rising underneath/ it must have been harder, when there was no bridge, just water.” Time Bomb, which set its clock to a brooding Pearl Jam, has, “If I'm a ticking bomb waiting to blow my top, no one would ever know until I blew up.” I think, Dave, you just did.

Rating: 2.5 Stars