Avalanche - Matthew Good

Avalanche

Matthew Good
Universal Records.

SCQ Rating: 95%

“It’s funny, I’ve been doing this for so long that going in to make a record is no longer an ominous prospect. These days it’s just another step in the evolutionary process, another blank canvas to fill, another experiment that will be followed by further experiments. When you are a new artist you feel the weight of all or nothing on your shoulders. After almost fifteen years of making records you know that a single album will never be able to define you, that each is a part of the whole, and that each new release adds a new chapter to the story.” – Matthew Good (from his website/blog)

Speaking about his mindset going into recording sessions for his yet-to-be completed fourth solo album, Vancouver, Good reflects above about the pressure on an artist hoping to change the world with a debut album. He doesn’t implicate any album as evidence but if I had to wager, Last of the Ghetto Astronauts wouldn’t be the first on my list. As far as fighting to assert one’s artistic purpose, Avalanche was his statement, an attempted summation of his musical evolution and political standpoint. Beyond proving consumer culture as detrimental to society or American foreign policy as the unethical global cop it is, Good needed to prove himself; after the lukewarm Audio of Being, the breakup of the Matthew Good Band, and his freshly inked contract with Universal Records, Good must’ve had “the weight of all or nothing” dangling over him.

The resulting album - a near-seventy minute exploration of orchestral swells, multi-dimensional textures and Good’s best kept secrets - is likely his best, merging his growing political awareness to wiser reflections of personal strife. ‘Lullaby for the New World Order’ and ‘In a World Called Catastrophe’ thrive on Good’s audible passion for electing change (from others and from yourself) while ‘Avalanche’ and ‘The Bright End of Nowhere’ are frankly among the best songs he’s ever written; private and chocked full of ideas that were only superficially investigated on previous releases. Sometimes the political and personal intersect so perfectly you can’t discern what Good’s truly singing about; a lyrical vagueness which is considerable more purposeful than some of his classic yet empty MGB one-liners. The fate of oneself, one’s relationship, one’s attachment to humanity and humanity itself all live or die by the same unsaid conflict in these songs: those who are ruined but still building in ‘Avalanche’, the ship of fools who console you while you drown in ‘Near Fantastica’, the you and I in ‘The Bright End of Nowhere’. Good and his characters are all in peril of blind progression, be it our affairs, nature’s or our government’s.

As thematically loaded as Avalanche is – especially compared to his previously addictive but one-note intensity – every idea and sentiment owns its own stereo territory here. The arrangements on ‘Avalanche’ seem to reflect his sort-of-a-protest urgency and most are new to Good’s repetoire: the electronic textures of ‘Near Fantastica’, the cut-up vocal climax of the title track, and some gorgeous back-up by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on ‘While We Were Hunting Rabbits’, among others. As well as sharing a newfound sense of sonic-adventurism, each of these just-mentioned songs detail Good’s first pushes away from commercial success by crafting eight-minute epics that appealed to neither radio nor casual fans.

Although I expect his forthcoming album to challenge his best work as forcefully as Hospital Music did in 2007, Avalanche remains a turning point and his hard-fought salvation. Years after its release, Good would mull this record over and decide that had he created it all over again, he would’ve cut ‘Double Life’ and ‘Long Way Down’ from the album’s back-half. And although I completely agree that it would’ve made a wonderful album damn-near perfect, even the rough edges of Avalanche have grown, albeit more sluggishly, into the lush folds of its majority. Like Good said: all or nothing.