Mercy, Dave Matthews Band

I'd give it 5 stars just for the horns. But with the music and lyrics, it busts through the ratings.

Don’t give up, I know you can see

All the world and the mess that we’re making

Can’t give up and hope God will intercede

Come on back, imagine that we could get it together

Stand up for where we need to be

‘Cause crime won’t save or feed a hungry child

Can’t lay down and wait for a miracle to change things

So lift up your eyes, lift up your heart

Singing, mercy will we overcome this

Oh, one by one, could we turn it around

Maybe carry on just a little bit longer

And I’ll try to give you what you need

Me and you, and you, and you just wanna be free

But you see, all the world is just as we’ve made it

And until we got a new world I’ve got to say

That love is not a whisper or a weakness

No, love is strong, so we got to get together

Yeah, gotta get, gotta get, gotta get

‘Til there is no reason to fight

Mercy, will we overcome this

Yeah, one by one, could we turn it around

Maybe carry on just a little bit longer

And I’ll try to give you what you need

Mercy, will we overcome this

Have we come too far to turn it around

Is it ask too much to be a little bit stronger

But I wanna give you what you need

Mercy, what will become of us

Oh, one by one, could we turn it around

Maybe carry on just a little bit longer

And I’ll try to give you what you need.

Why I Am, Dave Matthews Band

Starts with a tribute to band member and sax player LeRoi Moore. From the album Big Whiskey and the GrooGruxKing.

From Relix:

Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King pays overt homage to Moore in its title, since “Grux” is an old, nonsensical nickname some of the band members used to call each other that finally stuck to the sax player. It also plays covert tribute by being largely steeped in an awareness of mortal fragility—although you could say that just about every other collection of lyrics in the Dave Matthews oeuvre, too. (If the Old Testament writers hadn’t gotten around to coining the phrase eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, Matthews surely would have.) The record is steeped not just in feelings about a band member’s death but also the lingering depression afflicting post-Katrina New Orleans, where the final recording sessions took place in the first quarter of this year.

“Spare a couple of tunes, lyrically, it’s a pretty dark album,” grants the band leader, “but I don’t think that’s unusual for me. But there’s also a real joy in the performance of it. There’s no real point in mourning all the sadness and suffering in the world. Whereas if you acknowledge all the things that are happening in the world and you fight them as if it’s your first priority, then you still are allowed to laugh maniacally at it all and dance like a madman. And so this is my therapy, to sing about the end of the world and dance. We don’t find solutions in despair, we’ll find solutions in the defiance of it. All we have to do is turn the TV on or open the newspaper to see how much disaster and horror there is. Everybody needs a little horn section.”

Did he just use world suffering, theodicy and the problems of evil and pain as justification for sticking a big ole brass section on the new album?