The car shuttling Dave Matthews from a private jet to producer Rob Cavallo's Los Angeles home edges onto the freeway, and the singer reaches behind the seat to grab a copy of his band's seventh studio album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. After rambling about the ?slammin' latte? he picked up in Seattle before boarding, he debates whether the speakers in his publicist's car are up to the task. "This is a good record," Matthews says. "Even people who don't like Dave Matthews Band are going to like this record — and if they don't, then they just don't like music."

Big Whiskey is DMB's heaviest album yet, both musically and emotionally. The disc opens with an effortless cascade of unaccompanied notes by late Dave Matthews Band saxo­phonist LeRoi Moore, who died last summer as a result of an ATV accident outside the band's hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. As the album–opening interlude explodes into the deep, atmospheric funk of "Shake Me Like a Monkey,"Matthews, dressed in boots, jeans and a black t–shirt, gestures to his publicist in the rearview mirror: thumb to the sky, as if to say, "Turn it up."