Busted Stuff

The South African vocalist/guitarist Dave Matthews formed the Dave Matthews Band in Virginia in the early '90s. Featuring Matthews, Stefan Lessard, Leroi Moore, Boyd Tinsley, and Carter Beauford, the group's music presents a more pop-oriented version of the Grateful Dead crossed with the worldbeat explorations of Paul Simon and Sting. The band built up a strong word-of-mouth following in the early '90s by touring the country constantly, concentrating on college campuses. In addition to amassing a sizable following, their self-released album, Remember Two Things, sold well for an independent release; soon, they were attracting the attention of majors. Signing with RCA, the Dave Matthews Band released their major-label debut, Under the Table & Dreaming, in the fall of 1994. By spring of 1995, the record had launched the hit single "What Would You Say" and sold over a million copies.

A year-and-a-half after the release of Under the Table & Dreaming, the record had sold over four million copies in the U.S. alone. In April of 1996, the Dave Matthews Band released Crash, which entered the charts at number two and quickly went platinum. Throughout 1996, the group toured behind Crash, sending it to double-platinum status. Also in 1996, Matthews launched an attack on bootleggers in conjunction with the Federal Government, targeting stores that were selling semi-legal discs of live performances. The efforts of Matthews, his band, and his management resulted in an unprecedented crackdown on bootleggers in early 1997 -- with nearly all of the major foreign bootlegging companies placed under arrest by the United States -- thereby putting a moratorium on the entire underground industry.

To further combat the bootleggers, Dave Matthews released an official, double-disc live album, Live at Red Rocks 8-15-95, in the fall of 1997. It was an unexpected success, debuting at number three on the charts and selling a million copies within the first five months of its release. The live record paved the way for the April 1998 release of Before These Crowded Streets, the group's most ambitious album to date. Another live effort, Listener Supported, followed a year later. Summer tours also packed the late '90s, with sold-out shows across the U.S. The new millennium, however, saw the band back in the studio with Glen Ballard to record their fourth studio album. Everyday was issued in February 2001. The following summer, the band issued Busted Stuff. Debut single "Where Are You Going" was also featured on the soundtrack to the Adam Sandler flick Mr. Deeds.

The Dave Matthews Band may not have released the Lillywhite Sessions — the semi-legendary soul-searching album recorded in 2000 but abandoned in favor of the heavy-handed, laborious Glen Ballard-produced Everyday — but they couldn't escape its shadow. Every review, every article surrounding the release of Everyday mentioned it, often claiming it was better than the released project — an opinion the band seemed to support by playing many numbers from the widely bootlegged lost album on tour in 2001. Since they couldn't run away from the Lillywhite Sessions, they decided to embrace it, albeit on their own terms. They didn't just release the album, as is. They picked nine of the best songs from the sessions, reworked some of them a bit, tinkered with the lyrics, re-recorded the tunes with a different producer (Stephen Harris, a veteran of post-Brit-pop bands like the Bluetones, plus engineer on U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind), added two new songs, and came up with Busted Stuff, a polished commercial spin on music widely considered the darkest, most revealing work Matthews has yet created. Remarkably, these songs not only retain their emotional core even after they've been cleaned up, but they perhaps even gain more resonance in this setting. After all, Steve Lillywhite is hardly Steve Albini, and while the initial versions of these songs were raw, it was as much because they were not quite finished as they were Matthews exposing his soul. Here, these songs have been completed, not just in the writing but in the arrangement and production, so they sound just as personal to Dave Matthews, but also sound like fully realized DMB songs. And while they do jam a bit — in, surprise!, a song called "Kit Kat Jam" — that's not the emphasis of their performances; in these slow, moody pieces, they provide supple support to Matthews' elliptical, winding melodies and searching lyrics. The band sounds unified, and so does the album; one of the new songs, "Where Are You Going," sounded dull on its first appearance on the Mr. Deeds soundtrack, but here, it's part of the fabric of the album, equally effective in sustaining the reflective, not depressive, tone of the album. Here, there's none of the loose-limbed, frat-boy funk from DMB's previous albums, none of the smirking jokiness that has plagued their up-tempo jams, while the heartache and yearning that once seemed affected in their ballads is palpably real. It's not so much a departure as it is an unexpected twist in their career. By leaving behind the key elements that defined their music, DMB has revealed that they can hit a deeper emotional chord and, in the process, deliver what's unquestionably the best album of their career.