–

i am the first to point out that a january of 2007 music review of an album that was released in 2005 is a bit…specious, but being that it was new to me, and being how strongly i feel about the album as a whole i thought it only fair.

i was still in college for the first half of 2005 and i must say that the may 10 release was completely missed by me and anyone i knew. i remember seeing the very un-dave-matthews-like cd cover in a starbucks and actually assumed it was some bogus starbucks promo release. and, until last week i had heard absolutely no news, no thoughts, no music from Stand Up.

let me tell you that i am a dave matthews fan. admittedly, i was not a fan as quickly as i should have been. i remember luke mundy lending me Under The Table And Dreaming and try as i might to enjoy it while driving in my 1963 Corvair, i simply could not.

then one day my now lost friend Scott Hamilton (no, not the figure skater) showed me Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds Live at Luther College. and, from the moment i heard Stream i was a believer.

Stand Up is a horrific failure. do you want to know why? i’ll tell you.

the cd starts off ‘dave’ enough with Dreamgirl. the acoustic-guitar-riff driven song is all about sex and angst and dreaming and all the other things dave has written about over and over again since the success of Lover Lay Down in 1994 and Crash in 1996. apparantly Dreamgirl caught one lady’s eyes…hollywood power-house julia roberts appears in the continual-dream-sequence music video.

Dreamgirl doesn’t leave you wanting more…but it doesn’t warrant breaking Stand Up in half and vowing to never again buy anything from the music industry…the rest of the cd will do that for you.

track 2 begins and you start wondering what band is playing. Old Dirt Hill (Bring That Beat Back) is reminiscent of early nineties backstreet boys with it’s very inexpensive sounding drum loop and poorly constructed vocal harmonies. once again, dave is singing about kissing girls and riding bikes and….and who knows what. the incessant clap track wears into your conscious just like all those teenie-boppers did before you knew better than to listen to Alice 102.7. immediately you hear the age and the hard-living in dave’s voice. the vocally simple melodies of Old Dirt Hill (and the entire album for that matter) suggest that dave has all but lost his once smooth and tender pipes. i wonder if 15 years of non-stop marijuana use will do that to you…

Stand Up stumbles forward with Stand Up (For It). as an aside…the album comes with 4 tracks with parenthetical names…and unless you’re david crowder….just stop it. you’re embarrassing yourself.

the title track actually has that low robot-type voice at the beginning and after about 24 seconds you’re speculating as to who allowed for such a song to be produced…not to mention to champion a whole album.

what is Stand Up (For It) about? surprise, surprise it is another adventure into dave’s drug-fueled romances. the sax solo and drum intricacies might be worthwhile enough if the words ‘stand up’ weren’t being pumped at you throughout the whole songs. at about 3:34 into the song i had a terrifying flash back to the stream-of-consciousness writing style of everyone’s favorite grunge lord kurt cobain.

but, once again, just before you pop the cd out in disappointment the song ends, and then the real disappointment begins.

American Baby (Intro) opens with a very un-dave piano progression and, just as a smile creeps onto the heart of your listening soul, a percussion loop of machine gun fire begins. this track really is an intro, just an interlude to introduce you to the next car in this pile up: American Baby.

Nobody’s laughing now
God’s grace lost and the devil is proud
But I’ve been walking for a thousand miles
One last time, I could see you smile

I hold on to you
You bring me hope, I’ll see you soon
And if I don’t see you
I’m afraid we’ve lost the way

(excerpt)

now we get to dave’s real purpose, woven up so obviously in Stand Up. dave matthews, who has been critical of the Bush Administration since Some Devil. has decided to go a little bob dylan on us.

interestingly enough he waits to really drop the political jargon on us so that he might give us one more foray into a drunken boast of love-making capabilities with Smooth Rider.

i think i know what you’re asking yourself…is it something like “‘smooth rider?’ come on dave…is that for real?”

the answer, apparantly, is yes, it is for real.

Last night, no way
I was gonna be left hungry
and then your daddy caught me sneakin’ out your bed.
It’s just a game I play
It’s just I roll that way
Don’t think sweet baby
I’m messing with your head.

I’m a smooth rider baby
You know I just keep moving on,
I don’t know why I like to carry on the way I do why

It’s just that I’m in love with you

and i thought…not you too dave…not you too. more grated than ever, dave’s voice rakes across your ears like the filthy southern dandy that he seems to desire to be.

but finally we get to the main event…Everybody Wake Up (Our Finest Hour Arrives). if you’ve made it this far through the album, congratulations. you officially have what it takes to climb mount everest or engage 1,000 ninjas. now, let the propaganda begin!

Everybody Wake Up speaks for itself i think, so here are the lyrics:

Everybody wake up
If your living with your eyes closed
See the man with a bomb in his hand
Everybody wake up

Oh baby it’s not easy sometimes
They build these walls ever higher and hide behind them
Seems an odd way to try and make things right
Oh I feel like I go crazy sometimes

Our finest hour arrives
See the pig dressed in his finest fine
The believers stand behind him and smile
As the day lights up with fire

Everybody wake up
If your living with your eyes closed
See the man with a bomb in his hand
Everybody wake up

I Remember the words of the misguided fool
Do unto others as you’d have them do
Not an eye for an eye is the golden rule
Just leaves a room full of blind men

And the finest hour arrives
See the pig dressed in his finest fine
Don’t believe him leave and stand behind him and smile
As the day lights up with fire

if dave isn’t talking about conservative america then he should probably let us know (but given his recent political vocality i doubt that is true). if he is talking about american politics i just have one question: when did the american public start caring what a drug-addicted guitar player had to say about international relations? ah yes…the 60′s. how sad we are for that.

unfortunately in our society all that public opinion is based upon is how much money you have. i have a couple of live concerts on cd from dave matthews that were recorded by a friend. one was in San Marin and the other San Diego. i enjoy the music because it was just dave and tim playing the way they always do, amazingly. but, they were also playing the way they always do…high…and the incoherent nonsense that comes out of dave’s mouth for 2 hours is unbelievable. i have long wondered how a person so inebriated could play an instrument so well, now i’m wondering how a person so inebriated can think he has something to say about the affairs of the world.

Stand Up barrels on with 7 more musical catastrophes. Out Of My Hands revisits the cozy image of the evangelical pigs standing behind president bush, smiling and ruining the world. Hello Again and Louisiana Bayou are more demos than actual songs…in fact they are a return to dave’s deep south roots….oh….if by south you mean South Africa where there are no louisianan bayous then you’re right.

all in all the music is predictable and unoriginal. the message is anti-right wing and trite at best, perverse and inane at worst. the arrangement of songs makes me think that the studio had a new temp they were trying to get fired.

mix with all of this the fact that the cd itself came bundled with spyware if you loaded the “direct cd” function on your computer and the fact that the DRM formats of the songs are not iPod compatible without some external conversion software (that wouldn’t have worked in 2005 anyway) and Stand Up is much, much more than you bargained for.

i really enjoy dave matthews. his live music is by far my favorite, but i do thoroughly enjoy all his studio work. Some Devil was so impressive to me. dave continues to prove an unstoppable force in the live music scene…but somehow he has lost his way on this latest effort.

bottom line? well i think it’s obvious. but if you’re wondering what to do…then just Stand Up and reach for one of your old dave albums. or, if you want to do one better take some time to listen to the work of people who don’t assume they know more than everyone else in the world.

blessings

7 Comments

in general, music, review, something to read | January 29th, 2007