Writing, stellar musicianship on display in “Away From the World” 
Twenty years after its formation in Charlottesville, Va., Dave Matthews Band took a well-deserved break — it spent the summer of 2011, its first ever, off the tour bus.
The band has undergone a transformation in the last four years, with the departure of pianist Butch Taylor from the touring group and the death of founding member and saxophonist LeRoi Moore in 2008. While guitarist Tim Reynolds, saxophonist Jeff Coffin and trumpeter Rashawn Ross were added to fill the gaps, questions abounded as to the band’s future.
But if the album they released today is any indicator, the time away may have just been what they needed to reach back to the DMB sound of the past.
The album, “Away From the World,” marks producer Steve Lillywhite’s return to the band he helped raise in the early ’90s. Along with Lillywhite, who also produced the band’s first three albums, the soulful choruses, longing vocals and overlaid violin of the band’s earlier material are back — only this time, melded with the loud, electric guitar and horns that marked 2009’s “Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King.”
Musically, the first single, “Mercy,” is an update of the popular hit “Crash Into Me.” Soft guitar plucking is cradled by the band’s signature rhythm section; deep piano, bass and horns punch out each bass note while violin and electric guitar are laced throughout.
A heavy horn and guitar crescendo with the song’s pleading chorus, only to fall back again into a sweet piano outro punctuated by high-pitched trumpet and saxophone lines that pay tribute to Moore.
The biggest weakness of “Big Whiskey” lay in Reynolds’ takeover of the album. A virtuoso guitarist who has contributed here and there since the band’s debut album, 1994’s “Under the Table and Dreaming,” Reynolds became a permanent installment on tour in the absence of Taylor’s keyboards.
Reynolds wielded his distorted Stratocaster over “Big Whiskey” and in doing so, stole much of the limelight and solo time that had previously been violinist Boyd Tinsley’s. The band built its unique sound largely on frontman and songwriter Dave Matthews’ acoustic, South African-inspired riffs and Tinsley’s widely ranging solos, and Reynolds’ shredding and power chords throughout the album altered the sound irreversibly.
While Reynolds is still very much a power presence on “Away From the World,” especially on up-tempo jams “Belly Belly Nice” and “Rooftop,” he takes a welcome step back and, in doing so, rejoins the rest of the band as a layer in its multifaceted sound.
In the new album, Matthews’ classic carpe diem songwriting themes evolve with a newfound focus on the transience of the earth and its preservation for generations to come.
“Mercy” opens with the line “Don’t give up, I know you can see / All the world and the mess that we’re making.” He repeatedly poses the question, “One by one, could we turn it around?” encouraging humanity to believe the world’s not too late for saving. “Gaucho,” a swirling calypso guitar and horn medley that showcases drummer Carter Beauford’s versatility, repeats — to its fault, the line quickly grows stale — “Gotta do much more than believe, if we really wanna change things” and even muses, “But we will not survive ourselves.”
In his lyrics on the band’s eighth studio album, Matthews, 45, also struggles to come to grasps with his age.
“I’m too old to wanna be younger now,” he croons high above the ukulele ballad, “Sweet,” supposedly about his young son learning to swim. In the very next song, “The Riff,” he dwells darkly: “Funny how time slips away, looking at the cracks creeping across my face / I remember the little kid living in here, he’ll be living in here probably till I’m dead.”
As it continues, “The Riff,” like many of Matthews’ best songs, becomes a lover’s plea, and a good one at that. But while it succeeds as a tour de force musically, it doesn’t hold a torch to the melancholy, lost-love vulnerability on display in “If Only,” two tracks later. “Remember when I asked you if you would be my one true? / It seems like yesterday,” Matthews professes, later crying, “I want you, so take me back, please / Take me back, my baby.”
The final track, “Drunken Soldier” is indisputably the highlight of the album. It starts with Matthews’ quiet, rhythmic strumming, then sprinkles in some acoustic fingerpicking from Reynolds before the whole rhythm section enters in epic fashion, like it does on crowd favorite “Two Step.”
After several explosions of volume and horn runs, though, the song descends into the most soulful violin solo Tinsley’s recorded since “Crash.” Matthews sings a few calm, inspired verses before the band again erupts for the chorus: “Make the most of what you’ve got / Don’t waste the time trying to be something you’re not / Fill up your head, fill up your heart and take your shot.”
The song, like many on the album, features loud, made-to-be-played-live, guitar and horn lines that classified “Big Whiskey.” But what puts “Drunken Soldier,” and for that matter, “Sweet” and “Mercy,” above the rest is the breakdown at the end: Bassist Stefan Lessard shines as the song fades into a honeyed jazz funk akin to the eight-minute-long “Crush,” off of 1998’s “Before These Crowded Streets.”
All in all, in its retention of old-school Matthews songwriting and a re-emergence of Tinsley’s violin — fused with the loud, electric sound they’ve found — “Away From the World” is yet another step in Dave Matthews Band’s two-decades-long journey.
And mercy, is it a good one.
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By Kirby Knowlton | March 26, 2015