Dave Matthews Band: Stand Up -- capsule review

I've been a fairly loyal DMB fan for quite a while now. I love the man's voice (I dig a gravelly baritone; always have), am generally pleased and impressed with the arrangements, and tend to really dig about 80% of anything I hear on his discs. Sometimes it takes me a while to warm up to some of what I'm hearing, but I usually warm up in the end.

My brother very kindly gifted me with the latest DMB disc, Stand Up, for my birthday. I've been listening to it here at work today, and I'm less than my usual 80% pleased. The single "Dreamgirl" shows off Matthews' ear for the commercial. The second cut, "Old Dirt Hill," is of the some cloth: catchy and commercial. The rest of it, though I'm not so sure about. "American Baby (Intro)" and "American Baby" appear to be Matthews's swipe at the Iraq war; I'd call it a side-swipe, myself. I found myself wondering if I was intended to listen to these two cuts over and over again (as I have, obsessively, with so much of DMB's oeuvre) because I don't think I want to. Of course, maybe this is just a sign that I need to give this disc some time. We'll see.

Right now, this feels like a 20/80 spread instead of the usual 80/20. It perturbs me.