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Page 1
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Love and death: "They're good themes. What else is there?" ...
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Page 2
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Matthews cuts through the filler by digging up graves ...
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Photo Gallery
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Dave Matthews Band live in New York's Central Park, 09.24.2003
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— by Jennifer Vineyard
Dave Matthews' first solo album, Some Devil, is an album for people who don't like the Dave Matthews Band. There's no jamming. There are no solos. Not even a cover of a '60s anthem to appease the neo-hippies out there.
No, Some Devil is more about giving Matthews a platform to showcase his singer/songwriter side, via some serious and straightforward tunes with a curiously slow, sad bent. Could it be that at the center of America's favorite frat boy band lurks the heart of a poet?
Kind of, except for the fact that he doesn't rhyme. That's nothing new to ardent DMB fans, who might also argue that hints of Matthews' darker side have always been apparent. But on Some Devil, Matthews' downcast visions are given center stage, and the Grim Reaper makes more guest appearances than Phish's Trey Anastasio.
"Love and death, or sex and death, those have always been on my mind," Matthews says. "I've always written about those things, I just colored it with more smiley humor, [made it] more happy [before]. I still was talking about death most of the time, or love and sex."
Though it's more in the forefront on his solo disc, it's still not always immediately apparent. To get inside Matthews' head requires a careful reading. On the surface, some of his sabbatical songs seem deceptively hopeful, even happy. But like "Gravedigger," the first single, even when it's a shallow grave, there's always something buried deeper.
For instance, the jaunty album opener, "Dodo," is a nihilist musing on extinction, as if ours were next — because if that were the case, why should we abide by the rules of life's "little game"? A near-death experience fuels the floaty car-crash song "So Damn Lucky," which freezes the moment in time before the inevitable, with the narrator only being "lucky" because his loved one didn't get in the vehicle with him.
And while the spare, bluesy lament of the title track seems to be about a breakup, and he's begging for "one last kiss," the finality of the lovers' parting is apparent in the verse "I wish, I wish I was dead and you still breathing."
Yup, love and death. "They're good themes," Matthews insists. "What else is there, really?"
Well, religion perhaps. It's a tough subject to avoid when the end is everywhere, and Matthews doesn't necessarily believe, in the strict sense of the word. Though he's obsessed with mortality, Matthews has a fairly stoic bent, saying that when we die, "We probably more than likely go running up our [own asses], slowly or quickly, depending on the way we [die]."
No sugarcoating that one — but that's not his job, he says. Maybe with the Dave Matthews Band he might've used the smiley humor a bit more, but since he doesn't plan to bounce back and forth between DMB and solo records, Some Devil is his one chance to step away from the band, reflect on the world and write it down the way he sees it.
"There's a lot of filler in the world, a lot of, 'Oh, I love you. Oh, the world's so nice,' " he says in a pat Stuart Smalley imitation. "But the world isn't really nice. The world is a pretty horrible place full of miracles, and when I say miracles, I don't mean to imply there's anything involved in that. I just think there's some amazing things in the world, our mere existence, but there's a lot of filler and pillow coverings."
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Photo: RCA
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