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What makes Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King the Dave Matthews Band's richest, and quite possibly best, album is the implicit message that all the love and loss can be felt and shared through the music, that the creation of the music itself is the reason why they're here--and that's not just a moving tribute to LeRoi Moore, it's a reason for the band to keep moving on.
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Big Whiskey, though, is a lot like a New Orleans funeral parade--mourning and zest balled into big, brawny music.
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A fond, funky farewell.
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While the band takes some sonic risks and shows continued versatility on songs like 'Alligator Pie (Cockadile),' the album is saddled with some of the same leaden production values that have dogged the latter half of the band’s recorded career.
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Throughout, the spectre of death rarely recedes, but life--embodied by the proto-DMB revelry of 'Why I Am'--still prevails.
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This eulogy is a celebration, and Big Whiskey is a dense, humid album that, befitting its New Orleans origins, shrewdly cuts its melancholy with exuberance and vice versa.
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Producer Rob Cavallo, known for sharpening the teeth of Green Day and Avril Lavigne, among others, encouraged Matthews and his colleagues to turn up the juice and make some sharp turns. The shambolic groove that's long been the band's trademark remains, but it's toughened up by foregrounded electric guitars.
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Matthews finds a skillful balance in his lyrics between off-handed whimsy and deeper reflections, and the others back him with a tighter version of the instrumental interplay that has made them one of the most popular American bands of the past 15 years.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 50 out of 63
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Mixed: 9 out of 63
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Negative: 4 out of 63
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Jan 11, 2014
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Oct 12, 2010
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Sep 7, 2010