The Dave Matthews Band weathers criticism and the death of their saxophonist to emerge with their best work in a decade

When the Dave Matthews Band went electronic with Everyday, a la Bob Dylan, it lost them a lot of fans who’d been so enraptured by the band’s acoustic groove in their albums from the ’90s, Under The Table and Dreaming and Before These Crowded Streets.

In many ways, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is a significant album for DMB. Not only is Matthews resolutely sticking to the energy of electronica to get the music across, but the album is very clearly dedicated to his friend and colleague, LeRoi Moore, saxophonist and founding member of DMB. Moore’s stamp on the album is clear in the way his signature sax sound is used to bookend the album.

It’s also in the name — in an interview earlier this year, Matthews and bandmate Carter Beauford revealed that GrooGrux was a nickname they used for the late saxophonist; not to mention the album cover, which features Moore’s head as a float in a New Orleans Mardi Gras parade.

Luckily for all involved — the musicians and their fans — the album succeeds in every way. The sound, while not quite the vintage DMB, is close enough to the band’s original hook to still be intensely appealing. The happy amalgamation of what the music used to be and what it wants to be is sure to woo an entirely new fanbase — making up for the fans they lost with Everyday. They still have their “wild-sounding rhythms” and completely whimsical, yet heart-felt lyrics. Sample Time Bomb, a track that deals with loss and renewal of faith with words like “If Martians fell from the sky/What would that do to God/Would we put the weapon down/Or aim it up at the sky.”

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