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Dave Matthews Band: The Lillywhite Sessions

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Bama Rags Records
Released: 2001.03.01
Time:
 69:39
Category: Alternative Rock
Producer(s): Steve Lillywhite
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.davematthewsband.com
Appears with: Boyd Tinsley
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Busted Stuff - 4:05
[2] Grey Street - 5:53
[3] Diggin' a Ditch - 4:24
[4] Sweet Up and Down - 4:43
[5] JTR - 5:36
[6] Big Eyed Fish - 5:16
[7] Grace is Gone - 5:12
[8] Captain (Crazy) - 5:27
[9] Bartender - 10:07
[10] Monkey Man - 7:21
[11] Kit Kat Jam - 5:34
[12] Raven - 6:24

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Dave Matthews - Lead Vocals, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar
Carter Beauford - Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
Stefan Lessard - Bass Guitar
Boyd Tinsley - Violin, Vocals, Mandolin
Leroi Moore - Saxophone, Winds, Backing Vocals

Tim Reynolds - Electric Guitar

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Since first being leaked to the Web in March by sources unknown, Dave Matthews Band unreleased project ”Lillywhite Sessions” has become the biggest phenomenon in bootlegging since Bob Dylan’s ”Basement Tapes” surfaced three decades ago. If unauthorized downloads counted as sales, it would probably have gone gold, maybe even platinum, during its first couple of months on the free market known as Napster. (More recently, Napster has been blocking even creative misspellings of the song titles, though the tunes still aren’t hard to track down for anyone with half the obsessiveness of your average Davehead.)

Few abandoned albums turn out to be suppressed masterpieces. (Does anybody think John Phillips’ recently released collaboration with the Stones was worth the 28 year wait?) So when you visit the massively trafficked DMB message boards and find widespread assertions that this project (an album the group had almost finished recording last year with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite) is not only superior to ”Everyday” – the album subsequently recorded with producer Glen Ballard and released in February – but their best effort ever, you might chalk up the hyperbole to the lure of arcana: Think of all those groovy theology students who prefer the gnostic gospels to the official release versions.

As lost albums go, this one’s a keeper, though. It’s also depressing as hell, which – along with the lack of an obvious radio single – helps account for its orphaned status. Matthews has always been a bit fixated on mortality, which has tended to result in bittersweet at worst carpe diem anthems of the ”Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we’re toast” school. But during these ”Sessions,” reeling from the deaths of his stepfather and a beloved uncle, Matthews had the end more clearly in sight. ”Still think it’s strange I won’t be long for here,” he muses in ”Captain.” ”When I was young, I didn’t think about it/ Now I can’t get it out of my mind,” he admits in ”Bartender” – ”it” presumably being the big sleep. The album’s only straightforward ballad, the country influenced ”Grace Is Gone,” could be a lament for any old lost love, until the drunken singer recalls waking with his spouse’s ”cold hand in mine,” making it clear she left him for another plane, not man.

So much for that frat house fave image. If this isn’t weighty enough stuff, Matthews amps up another old thematic standby: the unlikeliness of the existence of God. The Peter Gabriel-like ”Grey Street” has a beleaguered hausfrau fearing her prayers fall on deaf ears. In the album’s 10 minute centerpiece, ”Bartender,” Matthews beseeches his divine barkeep for ”the wine you gave Jesus that set him free after three days in the ground,” though his cranky tone suggests wavering faith that any such spirit is in stock. ”Bartender” has been the clear highlight of most recent DMB shows; imagine the sweep of U2 but with the triumphalism gone ambiguously agnostic.

In a perfect world, Matthews might have pulled a Springsteen and simultaneously released both the deep sixed ”Sessions” and ”Everyday,” which seems designed almost as an answer album. (The best of the unreleased tracks will probably show up on a forthcoming live album.) Thanks to the Web, anyway, all these gnostic songs are destined to achieve something their frustratedly flesh and blood narrators can’t: immortality.

Chris Willman, June 12 2001
Copyright © 2015 Entertainment Weekly



The Lillywhite Sessions (tLWS) is a collection of songs recorded by Dave Matthews Band in 1999 and 2000 and produced by Steve Lillywhite. The songs, recorded by the band as a follow-up to their 1998 album Before These Crowded Streets, were ultimately scrapped by the band. Upon abandoning the album-in-progress, Dave Matthews was assigned to work with producer Glen Ballard who, in association with Matthews, wrote the album Everyday in just ten days. This contrasted with the band's prior style of writing, which included significant collaboration between the band members in the studio. The recordings later emerged on the Internet shortly after the release of Everyday, and created controversy among fans as well as the music industry, which was early in its campaign to curb illegal file downloads. The Lillywhite Sessions were never officially released, but most of the songs were later recorded for their 2002 album Busted Stuff.



Much has been written about the long, arduous process that the Dave Matthews Band went through to release their multi-platinum album Everyday. During the summer of 2000, the band recorded with producer Steve Lillywhite, who worked with the band on all of their previous studio efforts. Dave Matthews explained that his record company and management were disappointed with the resulting songs and recordings. It seems that they, and the band, felt that while the material was good, it was excessively dark. The songs were shelved, the band took a break, and Matthews connected with producer Glen Ballard. Matthews and Ballad started co-writing songs, something completely new in the history of the band. These songs so inspired Matthews (and brought him out of a depressing funk) that the original tracks were officially set aside while the new songs were finished and released as Everyday. Shortly after the release of the band's fifth studio album, 12 songs were leaked to a fan by an unauthorized source and that fan posted the songs on the Internet. It is a bit of a misnomer to call the resultant Lillywhite Sessions a "lost" album. They are a rough version of an album universally adored by fans and highly praised by critics, and whose existence provides an incredible (and violating) window into one of the most popular bands in America. The "record" as it stands is bleak and hopeless with motifs of fate, martyrdom, and abuse that all lack happy endings. The fidelity of the music is low, the songwriting is often not completed and includes some rambling, and overall it is missing the spark that could elevate the material beyond previous albums. Still, the Lillywhite Sessions represent the core of a brilliant, dark masterpiece. Fans who felt Everyday was too constrained and canned will love the liberated feel of these sessions.

JT Griffith - All Music Guide



In the age of Napster, we've begun to believe the music our favorite artists create belongs to us - heck we're fans; we're entitled to it. Ever since Dave Matthews Band decided to shelve the album completed during its Spring 2000 studio sessions with Steve Lillywhite in favor of the decidedly glossier, pop-infused production of Glen Ballard on Everyday, fans of the band have been clamoring for the finished product of those the recordings. It didn't help that the band road-tested several of those songs ("Grey Street," "Bartender" and "Grace is Gone" among them) on its summer tour, effectively whetting the fans' collective appetite for an album that wouldn't be. After the recordings were leaked to the Internet in late March, however, fans finally got their hands on The Lillywhite Sessions and heard what they had been missing. And they had missed out on a lot.

Though simple and vaguely uninspired, the title tells more about the album than anything the band's members could have slapped on it. It conjures an image of Dave and his supporting cast sitting around a mic in the studio bouncing song ideas off of each other. And that's exactly how Sessions sounds. Loose, rough and raw (in direct contrast with the slick, ultra-tight production of Everyday), the arrangements give each member a chance to spread out and weave himself into the songs. Violinist Boyd Tinsley and saxophonist Leroi Moore do an impressive job of harmonizing and taking the spotlight without inundating the songs with misplaced solos. Drummer Carter Beauford employs his vast arsenal of wood blocks, cow bells and cymbals, exhibiting his complex style that is noticeably absent from Everyday. The recordings' unfinished quality is no doubt the result of the album never receiving the finishing touches applied to a studio release (Beauford can be heard counting off the beat at the beginning of several tracks), but instead of cheapening the music, it adds an improvisational, live energy usually found only in DMB's concerts.

Thematically, Sessions picks up where 1998's Before These Crowded Streets left off, but here Matthews seems intent on retreating further into the dark corner he retired to in writing Streets. With titles like "Busted Stuff," "Digging a Ditch" and "Grey Street," the direction of Sessions is painfully obvious before the music starts. In Matthews' world, women always leave ("Grace is Gone," "Busted Stuff") and life is generally unbearable ("Grey Street"), but there's always alcohol to soothe the pain ("Bartender"). The somber nature of this collection of songs sounds all the more depressing against Everyday's saccharine blandness, but given the band's previous releases, it's much more believable.

For all its darkness, Sessions can't help but still sound fun at times. "Grey Street," a story of several people who have all but given up on life, is one of the catchier, happiest sounding songs on the album. The mixing of heavy lyrics with music to which his devout followers can dance is one of Matthews' greatest strengths, and he executes it here with a talent he has yet to show off.

Much has been made of Matthews' decision to switch to the electric guitar for Everyday, and the attention was well deserved. Where he had been relegated to the position of a rhythm guitarist on previous albums (Matthews has joked about Lillywhite's propensity for turning his guitar down until it was almost non-existent), he shoved his way to the front of the music with his dirty, grinding play on Everyday. On Sessions, however, he has yet to plug in, and his playing takes on a more muted, modest tone, setting the stage for Tinsley and Moore's texturing.

The time they spent with Ballard did teach them to be a little more musically concise, but the lessons had yet to be learned when Sessions was recorded. For the most part, the looser arrangements and longer song lengths work well. "Bartender" clocks in at just over ten minutes, the majority of which is a concert-worthy jam, but it never seems nearly as laborious or overstretched as "Monkey Man," which is only half as long.

Sessions and Everyday couldn't be more different, both musically and lyrically. The former is unpolished, and gritty, while the latter is honey-glazed pop. But despite its dark thematic texturing and rehashing of formulas off which the band has made a living for the three albums preceding Everyday, the pirated studio sessions find Dave Matthews Band doing what they do best - playing loose fun music that's tailor-made for live performances.

Matt Halverson - Music-Critic.com
 

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