The Matches are downright bloody bonkers. They seem to be able to switch from ‘normal’ pop songs to the downright strange and bizarre in the space of three minutes. There’s a pomp and majesty here the band have hinted at but never really delievered; a sense of real strange, overblown musicianship that is on the fringes of disappearing up the band’s own backside. At times I actually think it does disappear up Shawn Harris’ own rectum, with overly verbose lyrics and songs which meander aimlessly without a chorus, a melody or even any sense of direction.
But then for each track which does that (see ‘To Build A Mountain’) the band write two songs which counter the odd-ness. ‘Wake The Sun’ is a terrific pop song, while ‘We Are One’ fines a perfect balance between focusing on a huge sound with something a little on the strange side. Think Weezer back in the day if Rivers had gone completely mad – rather than just ‘I’ll sit and paint my room black’ mad.
When The Matches get it right, and they sometimes do on this record, they sound great. They’re inventive and interesting and a joy to listen to. But there’s about a third of this record which meanders, flutters and drifts around without getting down to the nitty gritty. And this is what lets the album down – not commercial enough, on the whole, to bother the radio, not weird enough for all the outcast, arty kids in school. Ironically the band’s search to be different probably doesn’t put them in either of the two camps they could have gone to, resulting in an album which is good, but far from great.