Dave Matthews is one of rock's most underrated Pretty Complex Dudes – as horny as Lil Wayne, as troubled as Thom Yorke, able to growl "war is the most vulgar madness" like the American Sting he's always sort of been. He's got a beige-Baja-shirt rep and a black-turtleneck soul.

The first DMB record in more than three years (and the first in over a decade produced by Steve Lillywhite, who helmed their mid-Nineties albums) serves up the Matthews magic in all its musically tight, emotionally bumfuzzled splendor: from the sex-as-food funk-pop romp "Belly Belly Nice," to the relationship SOS "The Riff," where Matthews sings, "I don't know the man living in my head/If I don't know the woman sleeping in my bed," to op-eds against political apathy like the fragilely beautiful "Mercy."

Lillywhite's sympathetic production and the rich band interplay, steeped in New Orleans R&B, lithe jazz fusion and nimbly driving jam rock, make for uncluttered songs that at times recall Clinton-era glories (the elegant slow build of "Mercy" is just a hacky-sack flip away from 1996's "Crash Into Me"; it could've soundtracked the shit out of a Friends montage).

And yet, this is no nostalgia trip back to the quad. Even songs that luxuriate in strummy romantic escapism take midlife head-on: "I'm too old to wanna be younger now," the 45-year-old sings on the gingerly intimate "Sweet." He wears his grown-'n-grumpy honesty like a champ.

Listen to Away From The World:

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."