Dave Matthews Band: Everyday

BY DAN FEDER

Rarely has a rock band experienced such a dichotomy between perception and reality, and rarely has a rock band put out an album like Everyday, which captures all too well the contradiction between what DMB is and what it—and its fans—would like to be. Everyday, the standard publicity line goes, is the band's "rock" album, a stylistic departure for the band that it undertook with total enthusiasm. In listening to Everyday closely, though, this isn't what comes across. Instead, the album sounds conflicted, as though DMB can't quite decide whether it wants to be a group of rock superstars or quirky cult legends.

Everyday marks the first time Dave Matthews Band has worked with Glen Ballard, a producer whose credits include transforming Alanis Morissette from a dance-pop singer into a whiny rock star and helping fuel Aerosmith's bubblegum schlock-hit phase. Hardly the type of resumé that one would expect to fit in with the DMB's homegrown, grassroots history.

But if Ballard was trying to work his formulaic, hit-machine magic on Matthews and his band, he didn't quite succeed. The scorecard looks a little like this: Ballard controlled on the choruses, Matthews took everything else. Songs like "Dreams of Our Fathers" and "Fool to Think" start out with classic Matthews funk-guitar riffs and include signature instrumental flourishes from the band. Only when the songs awkwardly shift into their choruses does Ballard's influence slap the listener in the face: instead of the flowing, elegant choruses for which Matthews is known, one hears the simplistic, ham-handed crap that characterizes Ballard-produced records.

The other songs on the album fall more clearly into one category or the other. "The Space Between" can be called a Ballard ballad, while "Sleep To Dream Her," though entirely lacking a hook, is still unforgettable in a way that only a pure DMB song can be.

Ballard's stamp is felt most obviously on Everyday in its general flow. The album tends to feel rushed, and not, in fact, very much like an album at all, in stark contrast to the seamless current that was Before These Crowded Streets. In typical Ballard style, Everyday is a singles album, designed for maximum radio airplay, not maximum listening pleasure. What Ballard doesn't seem to grasp is that not every band's musical ideas fit into four-minute chunks.

Fragmented and tainted with commercialism it may be, but Everyday still manages to capture the spirit of what makes DMB different, and really what makes them so popular. DMB's sense of joy, optimism, and love of making music—qualities that are absent from so much popular music—shines through the gloss. No amount of planning, production, or calculation can produce happiness, and despite its missteps, DMB continues to make millions of people feel really damn good. (RCA) —Dan Feder

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