The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

You probably know that I love the Dave Matthews Band. There are several people on Earth who recognize me solely by the fact that I love the band. That's moderately interesting in itself, but not extremely relevant. The DMB just released a new studio album last week called Stand Up, and it's not especially good. Their last album, Busted Stuff, was not especially good either. I'm wondering now if their first few albums were just produced really well, or if Dave is just out of ideas for writing good songs. My guess is the former, and I'll tell you why. Let's look album by album. If you're not interested in the whole analysis, then just skip to the end after the album descriptions.

Remember Two Things - This whole album was recorded from a club they played gigs in. It was mainly all of the first few songs Dave wrote and is pretty raw, but is very good. I don't know that it was really "produced" by anyone since it's mainly performances and not a traditional studio album. Anyway, there's sortof an exuberance about it that I really enjoy.

Under the Table and Dreaming - Their first big label album, produced by Steve Lillywhite. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard at the time and that's why I loved it. The violin and saxophone solos that went on forever were a novel idea for me and I loved Boyd on the violin especially. Also I got this album at the time in my life when I was most impressionable as a music fan. I think I was 16, possibly 17. All of the albums that I have a literal emotional reaction to I heard for the first time around this time in my life.

Crash - Also produced by Steve Lillywhite. I also got this album within that impressionable window. I was 17 when this album came out, my senior year in high school. This one is even more exploratory with featuring the violin and saxophone and flute and also has my favorite song on Earth, the aptly titled #41.

Before These Crowded Streets - The last one of their albums produced by Steve Lillywhite. A bit of a different direction, but still quality. The last 5 tracks are the tightest string of any album of theirs to date. Lots of violin and sax, again what I enjoy most about them.

After this album they went to make another one with Lillywhite and for whatever reason it just didn't work out. They scrapped the whole album and went out to LA and made an entirely new one.

Everyday - This one was produced by Glen Ballard who was he driving force behind the Alanis Morissette album, Jagged Little Pill. To say that the albums they made with Lillywhite were loosely produced sounds like a gross overstatement until you listen to this album. It is enormously tight, every song is under 5:00, and it is a huge departure for the DMB. Every song features electric guitar playing from Dave, rather than the acoustic he used on all the other albums with the exception of one or possibly two songs. When you would go to a concert and he would get the electric guitar before this album came out, you knew he was going to play "Crush". There are zero violin solos and zero saxophone or flute solos, and they really only come in during the choruses in the background. The hardcore fans, of which I was one at the time, did not like this album when it came out. This one has really grown on me, however. Every time I listen to this album I like it more, to the point that it's one of my favorites now. If this were an album by another band I would have loved it from the beginning, the fact that it was a departure from their sound was offputting at first.

Busted Stuff - This one was produced by some guy who's name I don't know. It is basically every song that was going to be on the album they scrapped with Steve Lillywhite. Actually, the album is kindof boring. The tempo of every song is pretty slow, and it never really gets going. A lot of the songs are great individually, Bartender, Grey Street, Grace is Gone, and Where Are You Going, for example, but the whole album is sortof a chore to listen to together.

Some Devil- The Dave Matthews solo album. Not sure why he made one without the band. It's OK, nothing spectacular. I really like So Damn Lucky, but I can't think of another song I really like off that one from the top of my head.

Stand Up- Again produced by some guy who's name I can't remember. This guy is known for producing hip hop albums, so I'm not sure how he got onto the DMB project. He's a co-writer on every song and he plays the keyboards on every track as well. There are again zero violin or saxophone solos and actually the piano sound is featured in a lot of the songs. The lyrics for this album are both corny and disjointed. You could argue (I wouldn't, but one might) that the lyrics are generally corny for all DMB music, but even by that standard these lyrics are bad, and at times are sortof dissonant. I haven't really gotten into this album yet because I start to listen and don't especially enjoy it so I put in a different DMB album since I'm pining at that point for something I'd enjoy. This one might end up growing on me as well, but so far I'd have to say it's pretty bad overall.

OK, I doubt you would have read this whole thing if you weren't at least a marginal DMB fan. My point is this, though, I think that the producers of their albums have a huge effect on the outcome. That's probably true of any band or artist, but I feel like their last three albums (Everyday, Busted Stuff, and Stand Up) have really inhibited what is great about the DMB. I love Everyday at this point, but it goes right in with the group in terms of limiting what they are capable of.

The Lillywhite albums have an exploratory feel about them and go out of their way to feature each member of the band. You could argue that this was at the expense of song quality, but I would wholly disagree with that because I love the sound of those albums. The more recent albums feature just the average guitar pop/rock sound that any band without a full time violinist and saxophonist/flautist could do.

To be honest, these more recent efforts have been marginal at best and they lack the energy that jumped from the earlier albums. None of them really explore the songs very much either. I got a feel from the Lillywhite albums that they used to search for things within each song and tried to suck every ounce of musicality from them, whereas the newer albums are formulaic and don't really explore much of anything. You can tell within the first 30 seconds if you like the song now because it doesn't do any changing. A lot of the songs are still good, but haven't reached their potential, in my opinion.