Ryley Walker cultivated a reputation as an internet jester so news that he decided to cover the unreleased
Dave Matthews Band album
The Lillywhite Sessions initially seemed to be a prank.
Walker may crack wise on Twitter, but he takes his music seriously, so his version of this shelved 2001 album is very sober indeed. Sobriety isn't a word associated with
DMB at the dawn of the 2000s.
Matthews' love of drink isn't hidden -- the man owns his own line of wine, Dreaming Tree -- but he imbibed a little bit too much during the recording of
The Lillywhite Sessions, a move that coincided with a general aimlessness within the ranks after the group vaulted to superstardom. Eventually, drummer
Carter Beauford instigated the shelving of
The Lillywhite Sessions -- so dubbed because it, like its three predecessors, was produced by
Steve Lillywhite; the record was never officially titled -- but the group didn't abandon the material, choosing to revive nine of its 12 songs for 2002's
Busted Stuff.
By that point,
The Lillywhite Sessions became one of the first unreleased albums to leak on the internet, its circulation assisted by
DMB fans who were already trading live tapes. Despite
Busted Stuff featuring renditions that weren't dramatically different in arrangement,
The Lillywhite Sessions retained a cult following because it had a downer vibe unique among
DMB albums. Certainly, that dark atmosphere -- dubbed "sad bastard" by
Matthews -- drew
Walker to the record, but his version of
The Lillywhite Sessions isn't especially gloomy. At times, he ratchets up the darkness -- "Diggin' a Ditch" opens with a furious open-string guitar drone, his "Bartender" veers into claustrophobia, "Monkey Man" is turned into a cloistered clutter -- but he also keeps an eye on both
Matthews' elliptical songs and
DMB's loose-limbed jazz fusion. In other words,
Walker plays it exceedingly straight, even when he's delivering good-time numbers like "Kit Kat Jam." This po-faced sincerity winds up underscoring
Walker's debt to
Dave Matthews Band -- they now seem like a clear influence on his adventurous folk-jazz -- while also highlighting the imagination behind the original set of songs. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
![From the Mars Hotel [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0603497827992_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "From the Mars Hotel [50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition]")
![American Beauty [50th Anniversary Edition]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0603497848515_p0_v2_s90x140.jpg "American Beauty [50th Anniversary Edition]")
