A couple of days ago, Stereogum quoted Dave Matthews announcing that "If this -- the forthcoming Big Whiskey and the GrooGux King -- is the last album that I make, it's the only album I hope people listen to."
That's fodder for the middlebrows who have dismissed him all along, of course, but it has us pondering whether the new single "Funny the Way It Is" might measure up to or even surpass "Crash Into Me" or "Stay (Wasting Time)"; hits we think rate among the very best of the nineties.
Like those two, this one's deliciously sweet-and-sour, and what it lacks in frank allusions to sex, it makes up for in pure muscle -- it's got a bulletproof groove and the type of bounce that has marked the band all along. If this were his last single, people would know enough to put it in a mix with his other great hits.
