AND THE BAND PLAYS ON...

摘要

Dave matthews answers the door of his house, acoustic guitar in hand. "Sorry I didn't hear you at the door before," he says. "I've been practicing. These new songs are kicking my ass." Matthews is loved by many but not by all. The people-music-downloading, Temptation Island-watching ordinary folks-love Dave. The Dave Matthews Band is the hottest rock act on the road, and its new CD, Everyday (RCA), is hotly anticipated. But critics are divided. Some admire the group for its lack of pretense, its knowledgeable embrace of world-music influences, its mastery of concert performance in an age when a teen hottie lip-synching to prerecorded vocals she may or may not have ever recorded for a song she almost certainly didn't write passes for a live show. But a lot of critics, to put it politely, don't think Matthews is all that great. To put it not so politely, they think he and his band stink, in a Spin Doctors, two-weeks-old, dead-Phish kind of way. "I largely avoid reading critics," Matthews says. Still, he can quote verbatim from a review that compared America's love of his band with France's love of Jerry Lewis. His answer is to raise his game. On Everyday, he ventures in a new direction, with a new producer and a fresh sound.