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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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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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Given the musically versatile, vaunted band behind it, Big Whiskey, for all its stylistic reach and array of textures, is frequently beset with a curious bout of blandness.
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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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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.
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Steady as she goes on AOR eighth outing.
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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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MojoAlthough every other verse here is filled by paradiddles, polyrhythms and wilfully complex time signatures, DMB's ear for a tune at least provides us with some fine choruses. [Jul 2009, p.94]
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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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Q MagazineThis record will quicken the pulse of no one, but then chin-stroking does require a certain musical mellowness. [Jul 2009, p.127]
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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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Produced by Rob Cavallo, Big Whiskey is a step back toward the more polished sound DMB explored on 2001's divisive "Everyday"--that is to say, a step away from the 2005's return-to-form "Stand Up."
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A fond, funky farewell.
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As a lyricist, Matthews prospers when he’s being boyish and mischievous, but his earnest bits are mostly unbearable, and Big Whiskey, in keeping with much of the band’s recent output, plays like one big scented candle.
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UncutToo often they sound like Sting fronting Counting Crows. [Jul 2009, p.93]
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