The first single from Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, the seventh studio album from That Miller’s Bartender’s Band (the rest of the world still insists upon that reductive tag, “Dave Matthews Band”), may be the best thing to happen to our homegrown band since its namesake perfected that chicken-footed dance he does so well. Well, except for the song’s title.
In the grand tradition of Alanis Morrissette’s “Ironic,” the single, “Funny the Way It Is,” runs listeners through a few situations that aren’t what you would actually call funny. Come to think of it, there’s not a kneeslapper to be had in the song’s four-and-a-half minutes. Instead—and with the caveat that we “think about it”—Matthews begins each chorus with the song’s title and then offers up a few scenes—“somebody’s going hungry and someone is eating out,” “one kid walks 10 miles to school, another’s dropping out.” It’s about as funny as rain on your wedding day, or good advice that you just can’t take. Which is my way of saying, it’s actually a coincidence. Who’s laughing now, Mr. Two-Step?
Hopefully, it’s still Dave Matthews Band. Because what is funny (if you think about it) is that a band that always seemed a bit more motley than marketable managed to put together both a particularly savvy marketing blitz and an album that may be its most cohesive since 1998’s multiplatinum Before These Crowded Streets.
On Monday, June 1, Dave Matthews Band performed a nearly three-hour set at New York’s Beacon Theatre, a gig that was also simulcast on the streaming multimedia website Hulu. (Also known as: “Feedback’s source of ‘Arrested Development’ episodes.”) As part of Hulu’s first music partnership, the website posted a handful of DMB videos, including a half-hour documentary titled “Scenes from Big Whiskey.” (In the first minute of the doc, bassist Stefan Lessard compares the Big Whiskey studio vibe to Charlottesville and Belmont. Great idea, Stefan—tell more people about Belmont.) All the Dave you crave is still available on Hulu.com for the price that some of you paid for your bootlegs of The Lillywhite Sessions—free.
The following day, Big Whiskey hit the streets, as did the first round of critiques. Reviews from the reliably overenthusiastic Rolling Stone critic David Fricke to L.A. Times’ “Pop & Hiss” columnist Ann Powers were generally positive; Powers noted that Matthews remains “a quirky presence, reaching for profundities in one second and for the tie of a girl’s halter top the next.” Now that’s funny.
We didn’t start the fire…
In 2010, fans of the annual Fourth of July festivities at McIntire Park run the risk of an Independence Day that’s more boring than those little pellets that “grow” into snakes at the touch of a flame. Last week, chairman Dave Phillips of the Save the Fireworks committee announced that the organization—which took over fundraising and planning for the annual spectacle in 2002—would extinguish its metaphorical wick after the 2009 explosions.
