"Everyday" Is Just That
By John AthaydeI 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.