New Haven Register

Review by Patrick Ferrucci

When you really think about it, Dave Matthews Band is one undervalued act. In a time when so few groups are stable long enough to last multiple decades, DMB has chugged along for almost two decades, making record after record and crisscrossing the globe during numerous soldout tours. In terms of contemporaries, only Pearl Jam can boast a run that began in the early '90s and is still successful. Although, DMB has easily been more popular over the same time period.

And like many classic rock acts before it, DMB has continued to release competent albums over the last decade, but has largely been in rut. Since 1998's "Before the Crowded Streets," the band, let by singer/ songwriter Dave Matthews, has seemingly been OK with putting out mediocre discs that found the musicians happily toning down the jamming and idiosyncratic traits that made them stick out so much. Leave it to death to snap DMB out of its funk, as "Big Whiskey & the GrooGrux King" is the finest work the band has completed since 1998.

In late summer 2008, saxophonist and original member LeRoi Moore died from complications from an ATV accident. At the time, DMB had been in the studio creating what would become "Big Whiskey," and the tragedy jolted the band. DMB continued its tour, even performing on the night Moore passed, but then retreated to the studio to finish the disc, now a tribute to Moore -- he is the "GrooGrux King" of the title.

The 13-track album opens with some sax noodling by Moore, before exploding into an earthy, tight rumination on death and love, all the while showcasing Matthews' best writing in a very long time. This is a band taking its craft seriously, returning to the wellplanned Jethro Tullish rock of "Before the Crowded Streets." Gone are the pop leanings, the obvious Top 40 radio wannabees and the marginal filler of records from the last decade.

On "Alligator Pie," the group -- which also includes Carter Beauford, Stefan Lessard and Boyd Tinsley -- shows off jamband aptitude in full style, one of many examples of this on "Big Whiskey." But unlike numerous other acts that worship at the altar of the Dead, DMB has never lost sight of the fact that a song has to be a good tune first, before it can be pulled apart with noodling and solos. And here, on its seventh official LP, DMB has got its groove back, just unfortunately it's at the expense of losing a founding member.