Dave Matthews’ new single strips the artist back to his acoustic origins

The cover is just a guy and his guitar.

There’s something therapeutic about hearing a new song from your favorite singer. It’s serving both sides, him for the artistry output and the listener gets a fresh set of notes and rhythm that will undoubtedly circle the head and heart like a helicopter waiting to land once the anxiety storm settles.

Dave Matthews released a new single today, a cover of a Hazel Dickins song called Pretty Bird. A nice snackable tune that comes in just over 180 seconds, which means you can easily roll through it twice while the food heats up at lunch or the drive through line waits to show some life. Released today in conjunction with a new Live Trax release, the song digs back into the arsenal of poetic toys that Matthews created Some Devil with nearly twenty years ago.

Without his jam band to plug his weary voice into a speaker, Matthews gets to simply sing, creating the runway for a listenable track that relies on his voice and acoustic guitar work only. I picture the Seattle resident downing his second cup of tea in a small studio office inside his home, wrestling with how to interpret Dickens’ lyrics as the rain falls in droves. (I hear it does that a lot there.)

The thing I’ve always admired most about Matthews is that he doesn’t need a band to create a song and bring it alive; he can sit on a stool and just sing. Think of the title track of his lone studio album. Some Devil gets into the duality of human existence: the wrestling between good and evil tendencies… stuck inside every one of us. That was just a guitar and voice in a room crooning in a sad way.

Pretty Bird finds him philosophically thinking back on the life of something or someone that has died or quietly urging a soul to move on, as if he’s telling that person to vacate the premises and discover better. At least that’s what I pull away from it. Listen for yourself.

“Fly away, pretty bird, fly away from me.”

If you’re a fan of the musician, this is one to savor. It’s Matthews at his bare honest behind the microphone, digging for meaning behind someone else’s words. For the longtime frontman for one of music’s most notable bands, it still comes easy 30+ years after their launch.

It’s voices like Matthews, whether you like them or not, that remind you why singers never really retire. They just need something to sing about, a set of words arranged in a way to make one feel something, that gives them the urge to keep creating.

Matthews put a nice spin on Dickens’ original, giving his longtime fans a faithful and nostalgic flashback to his solo hour.