Fingerprints Music

Reviews:

Dave Matthews could well be talking about himself when he croons "rollingstone gathers no moss/ leaves a trail of busted stuff" at the start ofhis band's fifth studio. An atypically quick follow-up to last year'sEveryday, the bulk of Busted Stuff salvages songs the Dave Matthews Bandworked on with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite during 2000, sessions thatwere eventually scrapped in favor of new material Matthews and company generatedwith Glen Ballard for Everyday.

But not unlike Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the Lillywhite sessionstook on a life of their own, widely distributed over the Internet and via bootleggers-perhapsprompting Matthews, who was playing most of the songs in concert, to createa legitimate release sooner than he might have expected. For Busted Stuff,the DMB took nine of the Lillywhite demos into the studio with engineer SteveHarris, fusing them with two new tracks for a still-cohesive and potent collectionthat's defined by the serious and even dark tinge of Matthews' lyrics.There are repeated references to death and drinking, along with admonishmentsto "don't lose the dreams inside your head" and a general heavinessthat Matthews seems anxious to shed in "Digging a Ditch," in whichhe pines for a time "when all these disappointments that grow angry outof me will rise, will die."

But the DMB faithful-who were ambivalent about Everyday's electricguitar experiments-will hardly be disappointed with Busted Stuff'smusical approach, a more rootsy and acoustic orientation that forays into R&B("Captain") and jazz (the instrumental "Kit Kat Jam"), makesreference to the vintage "Tripping Billies" on "Grey Street"and gives a studio home to concert opuses such as "Big Eyed Fish"and the epic "Bartender." Matthews may prefer rolling forward, butit was well worth his while to reach back for this batch of Busted Stuff.