Is pop punk the forgotten love child we all once held close in times of need? I certainly remember many moons ago it was this most humble of genres which opened the door to a world of liberating music, but it isn’t quite the draw it once was, with floppy fringes and cons replacing spikes and vans. The Matches wish to correct this however with 13 tracks of pure unadulterated pop punk ‘madness’ which unfortunately is about as much fun as a trip to Boston for the day. While trying so hard to be the next big thing, the quartet manage to forget any semblance of originality and/or charisma in their music and simply ply the same tired combinations of classic pop punk formulas into nearly every track. And the final result is a complete and utter waste of over half an hour.
Resisting the urge to go into full on rant mode so early in the review, you may have guessed I’m not its biggest fan. Sounding like Good Charlotte and Simple Plans ill-conceived love child, this is a long tiresome journey through a million tiresome clichés heard in the late nineties when the genre was at its peak. The manner in which it is done is also fiendishly memorable as pretty much every track manages to worm its way inside your head for the rest of the day, but to the bands credit, this is a skill they excel in. There are no finer examples of this than the early efforts of ‘Audio Blood’ and ‘Chain me Free’, both immensely catchy with the latter showcasing many of the vital elements of a performance on Top of the Pops. Gentle verse? Check. Silky vocals? Check. Anthem for a disjointed teen generation? Check. All the ingredients are there…
And just when you begin to think that maybe you have the band all wrong, they ruin it for you. ‘Eryn Smith’ starts with a riotous volley of noise before deciding to scrap what it started and revert back to the same formula as before. And that is the problem with albums such as this, they’re so formulaic it takes away all the guesswork about what is coming next. Having to listen to 30 minutes of music that blends into one as a whole is not something to particularly savour and proves the Matches downfall. Lyrically there is nothing impressive here with the line “She’s got a lot of issues, like a good magazine” proving a fine example of what to expect, but while it may seen as if this is one big hate fest, there are a couple of shining lights. The harmonies over the course of the 13 tracks are very impressive with ‘Track 12’ featuring some very impressive and above all different ideas with the approach to the song. The acoustic version of ‘Sick Little Suicide’ also pisses over its plugged in version and shows that when the sickly sweet approach is canned, there is a good vocalist hiding behind the pro tooled up sound and the end of the album proves the saving grace.
So what do we have? Well the song writing can be ridiculously simplistic at times, the music is only on rare occasions anything other than bland, but the band will inevitably go onto much bigger and better things. With the catchy songs and poster boy good looks, the Matches future is certainly rosy, its just a shame that their CD is as bland and generic as a lump of spam. And even that is more enticing than the thought of having to go through “E. Von Dahl” again.
Jay