Stand Up

Given the slew of live albums that clutter its discography, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that the Dave Matthews Band hasn't cut all that many studio albums. Just five in ten years, in fact (2003's Some Devil was a solo side project by Matthews), and two of those were made in the aftermath of the unreleased 2000 Steve Lillywhite sessions -- a set of heavily bootlegged recordings that most serious DMB fans consider among the group's strongest work. The brouhaha surrounding the Lillywhite recordings and, particularly, their polished, mannered Glen Ballard-produced 2001 substitute, Everyday, may not have affected the group's sales, but it sure wreaked havoc on the psyches of the band and its fans, who questioned the band's direction after Everyday. But all of that turmoil disguised a problem that the group faced: they still could captivate fans in concert, but as a recording unit, the Dave Matthews Band was having some serious problems figuring out where to go next. They pulled it together on Busted Stuff -- a de facto do over for the Lillywhite sessions that also functioned as a tidy apology for the Ballard debacle -- but that album was essentially a holding pattern, since the songs were older than those on Everyday, which makes 2005's Stand Up the first album of new material since that 2001 album, and it finds the band right back where it was after Before These Crowded Streets: the guys don't know what the hell to do next. ... Read More...