It’s been a while since we last heard from Dave Matthews Band, at least from the studio. In that time, the band lost founding member and saxophone player LeRoi Moore unexpectedly to an ATV accident. As heartbreaking as this is, due to it or in spite of it, Dave Matthews and Co. have come out of it more focused and with more passion and intensity than ever.

If you ask a big DMB fan to put on a song, chances are you’ll soon be hearing a live version of the requested tune. This is because, and this is just my opinion, but I think a portion of the fans will agree, that Dave’s studio material just isn’t as good as his live material. It’s more contained, it’s weaker; Dave and the guys so obviously get more into the song when it’s live and they can feed off the crowd’s energy. He sings harder, they jam more, the crowd interacts, it’s just a world of difference. I’ve always thought that the band had a hard time translating the live experience to a recording, but no more. I dunno if it’s the producer, Rob Cavallo, Dave’s wealth of studio experience catching up with him, emotions running high within the band, or what, but they certainly have captured a large extent of their live element on this album.

Another noteworthy factor in the recording of Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is Tim Reynolds’ presence. Reynolds is a guitarist that has been performing with Matthews for most of his career, usually only live, though. He was featured on 1998′s Before These Crowded Streets, and hasn’t been since then. This explains the severely increased amount of electric guitar and guitar solos/lead guitar parts on the album. When I saw DMB live last summer, Tim Reynolds joined them, and I happened to think his presence was more detrimental to the band’s performance in that instance than helpful. On GrooGrux King, though, he’s a welcome and unique addition once again, providing some atmospherics and a more improvisational feel to certain songs.

Another caveat of Matthews’ studio albums is that, and again, just my opinion, each album sort of has its own thematic “sound”. For example, there are many songs throughout DMB’s catalogue that you can hear and instantly tell what era it harkens from. On Big Whiskey, though, it really seems like the band spent a lot of time trying to create a varied work, and include a healthy amount of differentiation between songs. That said, Dave’s usual earthy, folky sound isn’t on display as much on this album. There are some Southern-tinged songs like “Alligator Pie (Cockadile)”, bringing to mind “Louisiana Bayou” and that vibe, as well as some slower, more emotional songs, such as “Lying In the Hands of God”, a hushed, acoustic yet drum intense song and perhaps one of DMB’s finest creations (even @kaitis likes it!), and “My Baby Blue”, a raw and emotional song, just Dave and an acoustic, seemingly about his sister. “Funny the Way It Is”, the album’s first single, is one of the more straight-forward and accessible songs on the album, making it a great choice for a single. It’s a big, traditionally structured song with strings to give it some underlying depth, which deals with the discrepancies in life: “Funny the way it is, if you think about it / Somebody’s going hungry and someone else is eating out / Funny the way it is, nor right or wrong / Somebody’s heart is broken and it becomes your favorite song.”

You may have noticed, at this point, that the name of the album is a bit strange: Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. While shooting promotional pictures in New Orleans, the band encountered a local drunk playing harmonica, asking for money with which to buy “a big whiskey”, which Dave liked because people wouldn’t have to refer to the record by the name GrooGrux King, which refers to LeRoi Moore, GrooGrux being a term the band coined to describe their unique sound. Potentially cryptic album titles aside, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is a remarkably cohesive yet unprecedentedly varied collection of songs from Dave Matthews and friends. Not every single song is a “So Much To Say” or a “Crush”, but there definitely are some real winners on this album, such as “Shake Me Like a Monkey”, “Funny the Way It Is”, “Lying In the Hands of God”, “Why I Am” (which are coincidentally the first four songs), “Alligator Pie”, and “My Baby Blue”. And “You and Me”. Alright, so they’re pretty much all great songs. If it’s not Dave Matthews’ best production yet, it’s certainly his most representative, and it’s undoubtedly his most personal and passionate. My only gripe is that he didn’t include the songs “#27″ and “Little Red Bird” on the album, instead choosing to put them onto a bonus disc with two other songs. These two songs are incredible, and would’ve severely bolstered the album, boosting it to a perfect seven probably, but as long as those two are released in some capacity (and they are), I’m satisfied.