Funny The Way It Is

So, new DMB single released a week or two ago:



I know we want to pronounce them dead. "Everyday" was pretty awful, Busted Stuff should have been called "Recycled Stuff: We Picked the Wrong Record", and "Stand Up" had one great song ("Hello Again")and the rest were pretty weak.

So, my expectations for "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King" are low. Honestly, I don't even look for their concert dates here anymore (I almost went a couple of years ago, but they broke their $50 limit promise, so I held out).

So allow me to say after a week of listening to this single, I'm torn: It has some really great things about it: Carter Beauford does fantastic drum work, the lick is pretty enjoyable, the violin work is passable, and Tim Reynolds always adds a huge degree of depth to any DMB tune.

I guess my ambivilance is about two things. First, some of the writing is pretty pithy and catchy:

Funny the way it is, not right or wrong,
someone's heart is broken
and it becomes your favorite song

Pretty generalist, yeah, but a pithy way of describing the way a lot of music comes about.

But the bridge lines just kill me. Pretty trite:

Standing on a bridge watch the water passing under-
Neath it must have been much harder when there was no bridge just water
Now the world is small, remember how it used to be
With mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars.


With so much to like about the song, I also wish Dave would just concede that the whole "electric guitar" thing is not right for him or the band's sound: Tim Reynolds electric adds layers, while Dave's electric efforts only seem to add an overly-poppy sensibility that drags the music down to the lowest common denominator (read: radio play!).

The song shows signs that I'll probably buy the latest effort by DMB, though I probably will have to think about this one pretty hard.