Dave Matthews Band, finally their new album, Big Whiskey

BLENDER REVIEW

Dave Matthews Band is back with their brand new album Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. They talk about the loss of their band mate LeRoi Moore, and how it has influenced their album... Check out the first single Funny The Way It Is

Dave Matthews Band is finally back with their long awaited album, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King. The album that is a tribute to their founding member LeRoi Moore, who they lost last August to complications from an all terrain vehicle accident. The band, who had the first single of their album free online, which FYI we loved, have also released their album list.

Right from the title, Groongrux to the spirit running through the album, the band was happy to find sounds cuts of Moore specially for the album. Reiterating this is Moore's beautiful bluesy sax solo that opens the album in homage to the bands saxophonist. "Groogrux" isn't just some random person or idea — he's Moore. "It's a nickname for LeRoi, it's a nickname [for] myself," Carter Beauford explains in an interview with MTV. "Now it's officially a name for Dave [Matthews], Stefan [Lessard] and Boyd [Tinsley], 'cause for the past 18 years they have been in the Groogrux academy. It's a vibe. It's a certain energy."

The loss of their bandmate, says Matthews in an interview with Billboard.com, also makes the album "dark, yet, optimistic, and has a lot [about] life and death on the record, a lot of reflection and searching in the lyrics". Yet, the album in homage to Moore, helps them deal with loss, and at the same time make beautiful music.

Big Whiskey says Matthews is all about building songs out of improvised grooves, while the single "Funny The Way It Is", is a "pretty song, that talks about a lot of things - death and love and all those things. That's the idea behind the song — that we will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save a kid's life and then we will drop bombs out of the sky on each other and blow a whole school of them to pieces without a thought. And that's a funny world. ... That's why it's called "Funny the Way It Is." "