They say Internet piracy is killing the music industry, but Dave Matthews Band's new Busted Stuff (RCA) is one hell of an argument to the contrary. Although nine of its 11 songs have been available on-line for more than a year, the disc sold 622,000 copies its first week in stores -- good for the third largest opening of 2002. That's business as usual for DMB, the decade-old roots-pop phenomenon who already have four multi-platinum albums under their belt. Busted Stuff is their third consecutive #1 debut, and that's as much a testament to their rabid following as it is to the band themselves. As a rule, DMB fans like to put their money where their mouth is: they might not all be willing to spring for that official organic cotton polo shirt, but most of them are more than happy to buy the group's latest CD, even if they already have an unofficial copy.

As most pop fans know, Busted Stuff has been a long time coming. The majority of it was written two years ago in the band's home town of Charlottesville, Virginia, where they originally holed up with producer Steve Lillywhite to record their fourth album. Just when they were about to finish the disc, they decided to abandon it and make a new album without Lillywhite, who had worked with them on their first three efforts. Matthews went to LA without the rest of the band; before long, he had a whole new batch of songs written with mega-producer Glen Ballard. Matthews and Ballard then reconvened with everyone else to record Everyday (RCA), which came out last year and featured bigger hooks and tighter arrangements than any of the band's previous albums.

DMB's new direction was an immediate critical and commercial success, and Everyday went on to sell more than three million copies. But the scrapped material refused to go away: the band started playing it live, and before long it was widely available on the Internet. Fans buzzed that the lost album was at least as good as Everyday and more representative of the group they knew and loved. Dubbed "The Lillywhite Sessions," it was a looser, darker disc that continued in the more sophisticated direction of its predecessor, Before These Crowded Streets (RCA). The band decided to revisit the songs -- they rewrote several, came up with two new ones, and ended up heading into the studio, with Lillywhite Sessions engineer Stephen Harris (who also worked on Before These Crowded Streets) assuming production duties.

Now DMB are back where they belong -- at the top of the charts, and on the road for the rest of the summer. (Two weeks ago at the Tweeter Center, they played a rainy, sold-out show that drew heavily from Busted Stuff.) They're also all over the radio with "Where Are You Going," the album's first single and one of its two post-Everyday compositions. It's a pretty love song that borrows its teary-eyed lilt from the DMB classic "Crash into Me," with a songbird sax solo sure to please fans who thought Everyday was too cut-and-dried. "I am no superman/I have no answers for you," sings Matthews in a moment of blues-inflected introspection, and those are fitting words from a man who's done as much as anyone to make modesty a virtue for pop stars.

The soft, comforting tone of "Where Are You Going" has always been a DMB trademark: for all its stylistic departures, Everyday took its compassionate world view from the band's earlier work. Like U2, DMB became one of rock's most significant voices of inspiration in the wake of last fall's World Trade Center attack. The title track from Everyday is probably the simplest piece of music the group have written, a bright spiritual that takes its innocent refrain from the Beatles: "All you need is love." It hit a nerve in the country's time of trouble, but DMB fans have always known where to turn when they need a song to be their friend.

By the same token, it's easy to be cynical about the cultural conservatism at work when a nation turns its lonely eyes to U2 and Dave Matthews Band. DMB are one of the few classicists to establish themselves in the rock world in the last 10 years, and they've taken their share of heat for being unoriginal. But every generation needs its classicists along with its avant-garde, and at this point, there's no arguing with the band's track record. The week Busted Stuff came out, Everyday surged back into the Billboard Top 200 after more than a year on the shelves, and the group's first three discs all moved into the Top 20 of the Pop Catalogue chart. Pop fans are still buying their old albums, and that's a sign that the band have become an American classic in their own right.

Classic is the operative word for "Bartender," the slow, brooding epic that closes Busted Stuff. At more than eight minutes, it recalls U2's "Bad" in both pace and dramatic scope, though it could just as easily be compared to any super-size stadium rock anthem this side of "Stairway to Heaven" and "Free Bird." The big surprise is that there's no tricky stuff -- just a simple verse-chorus-verse drone that tails off at the end, without much in the way of noodling from Matthews's virtuosic supporting cast.

Dave himself turns in a definitive performance, matching the most chilling lyric he's ever written with an appropriately bombastic vocal turn. Mother, father, brother, sister -- they all get called upon in his time of dying. But it's the man behind the bar who Dave turns to on bended knee: "Bartender please fill my glass for me/With the wine you gave Jesus that set him free after three days in the ground." Drummer Carter Beauford builds the tension with a tight snare roll, and Matthews takes himself to the verge of a nervous breakdown and back. He's not the first guy to incorporate the Resurrection into a captivating frat-rock marathon: mischievous heathen Perry Farrell went totally haywire with Biblical imagery more than 10 years ago on Jane's Addiction's "Three Days." But Matthews is on a more personal odyssey, one that conquers both death and the bottle by looking them right in the face.

Booze and God are recurring themes on Busted Stuff, but the vibe isn't always as heavy as on "Bartender" -- more relaxed than Everyday, the disc is amiable as ever and perfectly suited to tailgate parties. The title track kicks things off with a spare folk-rock groove and a weary smile left over from Everyday. "You know she's going to leave my broken heart behind her," sings Matthews wistfully, sliding into his signature falsetto and making way for a mellow solo turn by saxophonist LeRoi Moore. Matthews recently declared himself happily married in Rolling Stone, but heartbreak remains one of his favorite topics. The band are also more enamored of the blues than ever before, and they've shaved their world-beat influences down to the core. Bassist Stefan Lessard kicks off "Grace Is Gone" with a choice dobro part, and violinist Boyd Tinsley tosses off some countrified licks of his own later on. As for Matthews, he's crying at his bartender again: "She broke my heart, my grace is gone/One more drink and I'll move on."

"Bartender" is the album's obvious centerpiece, but "Grey Street" is the song that will have ardent fans heralding the group's return to form. Its jaunty fiddle groove is an inspired variation on the main riff from the DMB standard "Tripping Billies," and Matthews's animated third-person narrative conveys both desperation and hope. As the band's rich hues swirl around her, the song's protagonist looks everywhere for an escape: "There's an emptiness inside her/And she'd do anything to fill it in/But all the colors mix together -- to grey." Matthews's heart is breaking for someone else this time, but he raises his voice to the same cathartic heights it reaches on "Bartender."

Busted Stuff is the first DMB album recorded without any special guests, and the band come rushing out of the gates after being reined in by producer Ballard on Everyday. "Kit Kat Jam" is the disc's instrumental tour de force: its funk backbeat rocks harder than anything else here, and the group's focus on ensemble playing over individual showmanship pays off. Lessard once again proves a valuable utility man, contributing a warm psychedelic organ part that breaks up the happy jazz. And if Moore's plentiful sax leads occasionally drag things too close to late-night-television house-band territory, well, DMB fans are used to that by now.

The band start their slow, efficient climb to the high-strung blues of "Bartender" on the last couple of songs. "Digging a Ditch" is a somber meditation on death and loneliness with a folksy melody so pleasant you hardly even notice the bleak subject matter. "Big Eyed Fish" heads to the zoo and recruits a few other members of the animal kingdom (birds, monkeys) for a humorous parable that ends up being a fancy way of saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side." It's one of the album's dark melodic highlights: Matthews stretches his falsetto to its beautiful and haunting extremes, and he makes a portentous lead into the final track when he squeals, "No way out." Let's get one thing straight: Dave Matthews will never be a death-rocker. But the longer DMB stick around, the clearer it becomes that life is more than one big keg party to this band.

Issue Date: August 2 - 8, 2002