When you get over Everyday's new look, you still have the best Dave Matthews Band record ever.

[Glen] Ballard's production, arrangements, and co-writing duties have massaged the 12 songs into a searing rock album.

Matthews finally takes a full-body plunge into the rock mainstream he'd only dipped a toe into before. [#4, p.105]

Everyday has at least six tracks more beautiful than U2's "Beautiful Day"; the album, needless to say, kicks All That You Can't Leave Behind's behind.

The result of all this glorious epiphany is a record that remains on par with the last few DMB albums, filled with laid back grooves that beg for volume.

There is just enough sour questioning and irritation in Matthews' delivery to keep the radio candy from melting into raging glucose.

But the Dave Matthews Band retains one essential ingredient that transcends Everyday's calculated pop: Dave Matthews. With his sassy, unassuming swagger, unique vocal delivery, and blatant sexual urgency, Matthews carries the load amply...

And though the smarter songs (the more personal "If I Had It All," the easygoing "Fool to Think") benefit from the concision, the group's newfound musical sharpness isn't that of a world-class bar band but that of an outsize stadium act -- all grand gesture and larger-than-life lyrics. Sometimes, as on "I Did It," the band recaptures the spirit of seventies rock in all its innocent fun. Other times, especially on the cloying, overdramatic "The Space Between," it recaptures only those moments that involve holding a lighter high above one's head.

A bumpy ride that finds [producer Glen] Ballard attempting to rein in Matthews' self-indulgent tendencies, with varying degrees of success, to ditch his jam-band image for a sleeker sound.

Nearly missing are the charming sax and violin song augmentations. Gone are the tunes that are too long but always find their way back. And gone is some of Matthew's long-faced songwriting personality--now all gussied up in a swirl of quick hits, easy ballads and electric guitar.

A mostly disappointing misfire that seems too eager for commercial pop success.

It's not that the music is now simplistic, since there's still some tricky rhythms and shifts in tone, but the group doesn't have much room to stretch in Ballard's precise arrangements. In a sense, they sort of benefit from this increased focus, since the group's instrumental excursions can be a little flabby, but it still robs them of much of their character.

The band seems oddly restrained and processed through much of the album's 12 numbers.

A mod-rock mix that's somewhere--no, everywhere--between Matchbox Twenty and 'So.' [Apr 2001, p.154]