Sunday, April 13, 2008
A+E, Music, Reviews
The Matches
“A Band in Hope”
(Epitaph)
CREDIT: Courtesy of Epitaph Records
THE MATCHES
w/All Time Low, The Rocket Summer, Sonny, Forever the Sickest Kids
Thursday, April 17
Heaven at the Masquerade
$13.50
404-577-8178
www.masq.com
It was obvious, even on this Oakland band’s 2004 debut, that the quartet wasn’t going to be defined by standard pop-punk roots. The quirkiness factor was highlighted on 2006’s follow-up—featuring seven different producers—and is now in full bloom on the band’s third offering.
Like the double-entendre title (“abandon hope”?), the Matches confound expectations by running the kind of singalong choruses so endeared by pop-punk into tricky, at times progressive-rock structures that are, at the very least, ambitious.
But ambition can be a double-edged sword; for every act that pushes the envelope, there’s another that trips over its own good intentions, and that’s the case with the Matches. By trying too hard to expand boundaries, the nervous, jittery songs seem forced and unfocused.
Singer Shawn Harris, who co-writes the material in conjunction with the group’s manager (?), meshes David Byrne’s constricted yelp with Freddie Mercury’s operatic sprawl to generally conflicted effect. Although “Wake the Sun” is a catchy pop moment, there are five more tunes that shift through multiple changes looking for a happy medium between alternative, punk and art-rock.
Harris’ voice is an acquired taste, but when combined with complex, Queen-styled vocal harmonies and crashing guitars, he sounds completely out of his league. Lyrics are likewise impossibly obtuse, with concepts jumbled together that try to sound erudite, as in the environmentally sensitive “Future Tense,” but end up silly and disjointed.
Give ’em props for effort, but the real effort is listening to “A Band in Hope” without pushing the fast-forward button. 2 STARS—Hal Horowitz