Watch: Dave Matthews Band 'Funny The Way It Is'

Dave Matthews

Credit: AP Photo/Richard Drew

Dave Matthews is entrancing as a funny man.

The new video for Dave Matthews Band "Funny The Way It Is," directed by Fenton Williams and Jeff Crane, features the longtime frontman changing in and out of costumes, with tape stretched across his face, enduring handling by earnest handlers, gettting what looks like blueberry pulp being poured on his head and achieving the impossible: lip-syncing to an instrumental break.

The music video was filmed in stop-motion, in what give the illusion of one long shot. Regardless of how much actual editing was needed, the end result is impressive.

The single, culled from DMB's Billboard 200-topping "Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King," lyrically contrasts the good of the world with the bad, from babies being born to "a soldier's last breath." Our favorite line: "Somebody's heart is broken/it becomes your favorite song." It's not exactly a humorous song, in much the same way that most of Alanis Morrissette's "Ironic" hardly contained any actual ironies.

The track, at least for me, is what puts the band back in my good graces, with a structurally interesting bridge, a catchy chorus and an astounding post-Leroi energy. If only it were 30 seconds shorter so as not to breach that four-minute low-attention-span threshold. Read HitFix's full review of "Big Whiskey" here.

Katie Hasty
Managing Editor

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After five years as a columnist and editor at Billboard, Katie Hasty joined HitFix in 2009 for music and film reporting out of New York. The Midwest native has worked as a writer, music promoter and in A&R since 1999 and performs with her band Numbers And Letters.