Dave Matthews Band is such a niche product that it’s difficult to review any of their work; either you “get it” and love sitting through hours of pointless jamming or you don’t “get it” and are a shallow Lady GaGa fan who can’t appreciate true musicianship…but we’ll give it a shot anyway: Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is easily their best and most complete album to date, with radio-friendly hits like “Why I Am” and “Spaceman” playing nice with slow jams like “Lying in the Hands of God” and avoiding the uneven, jariness most albums of this depth might emit…for most casual fans, Big Whisky is a much easier listen than DMB’s past efforts.

Rating: 7.8 / 10

RCA
June 2, 2009

The Kinks – Muswell Hillbillies

November 24, 1971
RCA
Rating: 4.99 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: You will not find a more perfect blend of country, pop, and rock than Muswell Hillbillies; Ray Davies has created what is close to the perfect album, with a stripped-down-but-not-simplistic sound, the best lyrics he’s ever writen, and matching sound to subject sublimely, doing an even better job than the supremely underrated The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society at throwing back to the old old school.

Best moments: From the stubborn defiance of “20th Century Man” to the slurring mopery of “Alcohol”, the wistful backwoods twang of “Uncle Son” to the barebones country-blues of “Holloway Jail” – Muswell Hillbillies is full of them.

A lone and insignificant weak moment: The only weak spot is “Oklahoma USA”, and only because, unlike every other song on the album, it is a comparitively bland and generic ballad that based on sound alone almost doesn’t fit.

1998 CD reissue: The remastered version features two similarly excellent bonus tracks, including “Mountain Woman”, which could have easily been substituted for “Oklahoma USA”