This came out in 2002 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Officially, Busted Stuff is the Dave Matthews Band’s followup to last year’s radio-friendly, Glen Ballard-produced Everyday. But in a way, it’s sort of a prequel.
You see, most of these 11 songs date back to the infamous Lillywhite Sessions — the name given to the infamous, soul-searching album the band recorded in 2000 with longtime producer Steve Lillywhite and then scrapped as excessively bleak and hopeless. But these aren’t the heavily bootlegged tracks that most DMB fans have already downloaded. These are rewritten, rearranged and re-recorded versions of most of those songs, interspersed with a couple of new cuts. In theory, it shouldn’t fly; the dark emotions at the heart of these songs would seem to be at odds with the crisp, commercial production. But somehow, thanks to his band’s jazzily tasteful performances and overall restraint — as on Everyday, the group’s penchant for lengthy jamming has been severely reined in — Busted Stuff emerges as one of the most distinctive and personal discs in the DMB catalog. One quibble: The bonus DVD is really just a 10-minute sampler for an upcoming concert disc, and the enhanced CD isn’t Mac-compatible. Other than that, Busted Stuff doesn’t have much that needs fixing.
