By John Athayde
06/26/01

I finally sat down with my (non-Napster) copy of Everyday and did a little critical listening. Not the commuting-in-the-car listening. Not the background-music-at-work listening. Not the Friday-night-with-significant-other listening. The listening where I unplug the phone, turn off the computer, lock the doors, turn off the lights, and put on the earphones for 50 minutes and 51 seconds.

History appears to repeat itself with the life cycle of an artist. The question arises: "Should we make another [insert name of last phenomenally successful album here] or should we push the envelope and reinvent ourselves?" Madonna has done it, Styx tried to do it, and U2 has done it numerous times. So DMB did it. After listening to the album, it appears they stalled a few times in the process.

A bit of a history lesson: In the second article I ever wrote on nancies.org I brought out the DMB/U2 comparison. At the time, people had said that Before These Crowded Streets was the Dave Matthews Band equivalent of U2's The Joshua Tree. That it was the album that would be seen as their greatest work. It was more so an experiment with a more lush sound and a more intricate creation process.

Alright, I've heard way too much of this. Ask my friends. I grew up on U2...and then I got into Dave...I love them BOTH. And there IS a connection. Although not in the sense that most of you are thinking...

For you that don't know, U2's first few albums were as follows: Boy, October, War, Unforgettable Fire, and the Joshua Tree. And for those of you who don't know, DMB's album release pattern has been: Remember Two Things (R2T), Under The Table and Dreaming (UTTAD), Crash (Crash), and Before These Crowded Streets (BTCS).

Now, Musically, we all know DMB's set up... U2 is a simple 4 piece rock band. Drums, Bass, Guitar, and Vox. So there we go. That's the setup.

Now, Musically, U2 is far different from DMB. U2 is focused around the lyrics mixed with the entire sound usually orchestrated beautifully by the band with many complex layers of guitars and other instruments. DMB concentrates more on the Musical aspect of things, the intricacies of jams, the replication of the same thing in the studio as live, many guest artists in the studio. Radically different approaches. But they both used Steve Lillywhite exclusively for their first 3 major label albums...

So, the album comparison -

Boy vs. Remember 2 Things
These two albums served as an introduction for the band to an underground audience... DMB built theirs on Touring, U2 was a breakaway punk band who had just come over from Ireland. They are very straightforward, not too explorative, but both were radically different and new when released to the music scene. U2 to the punk/new wave era of 1981 and DMB to the grunge era of 1993...

October vs. UTTAD
For U2, this album didn't push them over the top, but it secured them as a good, albeit not phenomenal band in the European and American scene. With DMB, this launched them into large arenas in the USA.

War vs. Crash
This is the album where both bands came into their own. U2 was headlining red rocks, selling out festivals in Germany, etc. They had become one of the largest rock bands of the era. This album secured DMB as the largest Rock band in America. The music begins to try out new concepts and take on a style of its own.

Unforgettable Fire vs. BTCS
Now people were calling BTCS DMB's Joshua Tree. I think that is the next album for a reason. BTCS is a very experimental album. The band switched tracks and went off in many new directions, some of which are not as well received (e.g. Crush - the song is nowhere as popular as earlier releases by the band) due to their experimental nature. I feel that this is very similar to The Unforgettable Fire - an album which U2 switched producers to Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois and went off in a new direction entirely.

So where does this put us? This short discussion could be stretched into a thesis but my carpal tunnel syndrome will stop that long before it happens... My attitude is that the next work will be seen as the band's greatest work and will land them on the cover of Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone... but only time will tell.

Now, my review of the album is a mixed one. On one hand, I despise the disc. I categorize it as trite pop without any inclusion of the Dave Matthews Band that its audience knows. Some of these songs could be sung by N*Sync and no one would be the wiser. Dave (and Glen Ballard) wrote good pop songs. For the sake of not starting a whole new subtext to this review, that is taken for granted. The album's sales of 732,000 in the first week seem to support this. I've actually found myself singing along to some of the songs. That's what pop songs make you do: hum along, sing them in the elevator. They are pop, and there is no doubt that this pop music album will make the band popular.

On the other hand, some of the music is phenomenal. The arrangements are very tight (no doubt due, in part, to the band's first-ever use of charts in the studio) , and Glen Ballard is a great producer. I am not questioning the talent of any of these individuals. I am questioning the circumstances and how one can believe that ten great songs were written in nine days.

Is this the best album ever by Dave Matthews Band? No. This is not their Joshua Tree. If Daniel Lanois had produced it, maybe. If they would have tried to infuse the Lillywhite sessions with new life? Probably.

Last night, I read the Rolling Stone's March article about DMB, "The Salvation of Dave Matthews." I agree that the songs that were debuted on the last tour and supposedly recorded during the Lillywhite sessions had a somewhat depressing vibe, but at the same time, it appears that the band might have reacted by going too far in the other direction. Every major reinvention by any artist is bound to be an upheaval. U2 made Achtung Baby, which almost tore the band apart. It also set them up to reinvent themselves at any juncture. It's not easy making great music. It is hard work and can sometimes be painful. But the end product has the power to generate change on a personal level.

Is this band the band of the moment? Do they have the kind of power that U2 did in the 80s? In the midst of new wave and pop shite of the 1980s, U2, a rock band with punk roots, took over the music scene with an Irish interpretation of old American Music. There was spirituality. There was a destination. There was a discovery. There was an interpretation. Maybe that is something that doesn't happen in modern music, something that is desperately missing in modern music.

Everyday is not a journey. It is not a discovery. There is no revelation. It is a product. It is an end. It is packaged up nicely with the awkward novelty of a downloadable lyric insert. How many fans will coat their kitchen table with rubber cement in a vain attempt to make that work right?

Crowded Streets was a journey. It started somewhere. It ended somewhere completely different.

I enjoy the music on most of Everyday's tracks, but the lyrics leave me starving to put in something like The Unforgettable Fire or anything. Christina Aguliera tackles deeper subjects than Dave did in "Angel." Here's the line from "Angel" that sums up the lyrical quality on this disc for me:

"Why do I beg like a child for your candy?"

These lyrics are a sad shift from previous albums. I'm not suggesting that the band goes to misery and makes sad, depressing music, but you can make up music that has a sad tinge to it. Hope and plasticized happiness are two radically different things.

And based on the recent Rolling Stone article, I don't think that the Lillywhite Sessions will ever be released. Bruce Flohr, RCA's A&R representative that works with the band, thought the material was lacking upbeat numbers (see Rolling Stone #864 p. 51) and that he "wasn't feeling [the album] as a fan."

Now that I've completely lambasted the disc, I feel I need to find the redemption in this release:

Everyday has good music on it. The songs are catchy, and "Everyday," "Mother Father," "The Space Between," and the orchestral washes of "What You Are" are all bright points. "I Did It" is a good song - it reminds me of the comedy of "What Would You Say?" and, because "I Did It" is in jest, I can go around singing it without feeling stupid. These pieces show a band experimenting, or at least a producer experimenting. If this disc had evolved through jamming with each band member bringing in influences on their own (as U2 did with Achtung Baby) this album could have been completely different. It would have been an album by the "Dave Matthews Band."

I'm also convinced that the live renditions of these songs will probably be great, and that over the course of the tour, they will grow and develop into better songs. And I also think that I will probably succumb to pop music and shout out the lyrics I know to be trite and silly because they are simply so catchy that I am compelled to do so.

About 40 percent of this album is what I would expect from a group of artists as talented as DMB. Most of the songs are just not up to par with what they are capable of producing. It doesn't have the sound of something that evolved. It's a wine that has not sat on the rack long enough. The songs might have grow better with age and development, but the disc is a snapshot. It is static. The band went for a quick fix instead of letting a process like U2's Achtung Baby happen. There is so much potential in these pieces, but the album simply falls short. I listen and look for something that makes me go "yeah!" with this disc, something that makes me want to run out in the street and grab the first person I meet and tell them how this album is the greatest thing I have ever heard. But, so far, I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

nancies.org | June 26, 2001