Vancouver - Matthew Good

Vancouver

Matthew Good
Universal Music.

SCQ Rating: 87%

In April of 2008, I posted some rough first impressions on a series of demos leaked to the internet, all of which were purportedly conceived and considered for Matthew Good’s follow-up to Hospital Music. While the post has been a regular attraction for curious Matthew Good fans this past year and a half, I hadn’t bothered to re-read those demo-inspired sentiments until tonight, as I expected to disagree now that those songs have been studio-recorded and widely released as Vancouver. Yet of the demos that made it to Good’s fourth solo album (‘Bad Pennies’ was wisely nixed), who could deny what convincing mannequins they are when compared to their finished compositions? Due to my usurping of those downloaded demos, Vancouver lacks a ton of surprises one would expect from a new release… meaning two things: (1) the many things I loved about the demos are bigger and better on this finished LP, and (2) a few aspects of the demos I shrugged about remain largely unchanged.

Skirting those speed-bumps for now, however, let’s get to Vancouver’s considerable punch; that after Hospital Music’s acoustic and autobiographical intimacy, Good has fought forward with his first unabashed rock record since 2004. Better yet, it’s his most impassioned set since Avalanche, again neighbouring personal reflections with political call-to-arms and sounding positively indebted to his subjects of choice: the state of human decency, the state of Matthew Good. It seems like a disclose and destroy strategy, touching upon his private life in delicate detail while swinging his social viewpoints wildly, but given the BC city’s recent lack of human decency (in a coarse nut-shell: the impending Olympics have instilled city workers with the “right” to forcibly displace homeless people, some of whom Good knows), Vancouver is a well-planned platform for Good to combine his seething disbelief with nearly two decades of lived-in memories. The weight of this back-story isn’t required reading but it provides additional chills for long-term Good fans. ‘Empty’s Theme Park’, for example, stories Good’s early adulthood living out of a basement apartment in Port Moody but beneath the surface level - of a rearview look at him and his city, growing up – ‘Empty’s Theme Park’ is a microcosm of many Vancouver themes, outlining Good’s own mental illness, then undiagnosed and torturing him, and how it connects him to a tragic percentage of homeless people. How deeply one wishes to tread into the record's subject matter is as optional as how much one chooses to read on his prolific, oft-outspoken website, but what’s important is that Good’s return to rock isn’t without purpose or real emotion.

That said, Vancouver doesn’t forget to bundle up some newborn Matthew Good classics. True to the demo’s potential, ‘The Boy Who Could Explode’ is a thrilling masterwork; grinding as if Good was scratching palm-stiff guitar strings like a train over tracks, the song blossoms into a symphonic anthem of unblinking assuredness. In fact, coupled with the intensity of opener ‘Last Parade’, this latest album nearly overwhelms in its first third. Luckily its mid-section settles into meat and potatoes rock on ‘Us Remains Impossible’ and the twilight acoustics of ‘On Nights Like Tonight’ (think a more personal, concise ‘Avalanche’). Considering Vancouver’s multiple candidates for “classic” status, the track that screams out the clearest is ‘A Silent Army In the Trees’, which digs into the gray area separating childhood war fantasies and real military life with some of Good’s most powerful lyrics to date. Interesting enough, ‘A Silent Army In the Trees’ and nearly every song on Vancouver is longer than it needs to be… yet as a testament to the songwriter’s charisma, the songs don’t suffer from their seven or nine minute lengths. If anything, their longer gestation time uncovers added significance for listeners, further removing Good’s work from radio-rock’s narrow-minded limitations and warranting him an audience all his own.

If there’s any miscalculation to be mentioned, it’s that some tracks feel longer than they are on account of tepid backing-band arrangements. When Good announced ‘Champions of Nothing’ would open Hospital Music at over ten-minutes in length, he was the first to comment that it was his longest composition. And while no single track on Vancouver crosses that milestone, their stationary performances (the unwavering percussion, the carbon copy guitar lines) lack spontaneity as if there was no backing-band, as if some of these tracks never evolved beyond the measured tracking that laptop recording insists upon. In that respect, a great song like ‘Vancouver National Anthem’ is reduced to a decent take and ‘Empty’s Theme Park’ borders on overkill. Yet ‘Champions of Nothing’, still Good’s longest song, feels far shorter than both of these tracks thanks to its shifting, surging dynamic; a few songs on Vancouver’s back-end could’ve used more of that.

Bearing in mind how bleak Hospital Music was, it’s something of a double-take to realize that Vancouver might just be the darker record. Brooding strings and ominous synths, while shaping the album’s sonic mood no differently than how the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra filled out Avalanche’s sound, menace beneath every track and Good’s lyrics recapture the visceral, angry mentality of Beautiful Midnight (granted, with a more mature, justified approach). The key to this permeating darkness is wielding it effectively, whether needling it into goofy social commentary on ‘The Future is X-Rated’ or sacrificing it altogether for vulnerability on ‘Empty Road’. Although Vancouver is most certainly his easiest solo album to get excited about, Good’s instrumental moodiness nearly gets the best of him.

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.

Hospital Music - Matthew Good

Hospital Music

Matthew Good
Universal Records.

SCQ Rating: 93%

Let’s rewind a decade to Canada’s teenage recording boom, when bands like Econoline Crush, I Mother Earth, Our Lady Peace, Moist and Matthew Good Band fought for our airwaves. In these pre-downloading days, each of these bands sold platinum records, yet how many songs from this would-be golden age can you honestly claim have survived the test of time? The two most definitive singles that should come to mind are ‘Naveed’ and ‘Apparitions’; the other bands, whose hooks and choruses said all there was to say, haven’t aged half as gracefully. Now consider the turn of the century, when Nickelback, Sam Roberts and Finger Eleven hold the Canadian Content ring; one of these bands having become tantamount to faceless American hick-rock, the other two as good as their next single.

There is no remaining doubt, commercially or artistically, that Matthew Good has surpassed all of his 90s alt-rock contemporaries. And if it wasn’t already obvious that Good is poised to join Robbie Robertson, Neil Young, and the late Jeff Healy as treasured Canadian songwriters, Hospital Music assures it. Without the assistance of Universal Records, who offered little to no promotional efforts to Good’s last LP in their contract – ‘Born Losers’, one of the most heavily spun songs on Canadian rock radio last year, was never afforded a music video – Good still rivaled all the current competition. Two sold-out tours, a #1 selling debut week on I-Tunes for ‘Born Losers’, and an obsessive fanbase, and all for a record which deals exclusively with addiction, loss, collapse and (maybe a bit of) redemption.

After the ho-hum White Light Rock and Roll Review, which tread modern rock waters as well as some of those aforementioned Canadian bands, Hospital Music opens with ‘Champions of Nothing’, a nightmarish ten-minute dirge that leaves listeners with the knowledge that Good’s ambition is entirely reinvigorated. Despite the goosebumps, this track is a risky move; the kind of desperate and fatalistic opener that first-time listeners will either fall in love with or quickly turn off. Slipping comfortably into ‘A Single Explosion’, Good’s acoustic relaxes as he sings an anti-love song about pills and overdosing that somehow retains all romance when it bursts into a piano-assisted release that seems to give closure to both songs. A striking couplet, lending its weight to the following tracks until it’s snowballing; each song feeding melancholy into the next, creating a mood piece that the Cure would be proud of.

Although Hospital Music is a turning point for Good, creatively and critically, it can be compared to Avalanche in terms of scope and aesthetic. Where Avalanche focused primarily on the plight of humanity and the politics of consumerism, Hospital Music finds the same complex issues but inherently, its songs somehow decoding the condition that nearly ended Good’s life in the fall of 2006. Aesthetically, this latest effort is linked as well, but whereas Avalanche filled its lush sound with live orchestra and subtle electronic soundscapes, Hospital Music is predominantly pillowed by keyboards, synths and archaic samples – grainy vocal loops, vinyl fuzz and ambient sounds – that paint a more isolating aural picture. When all the chips are down, Hospital Music is the better album because of its personal nature; our interest in Matthew Good – the confrontational artist, the defiant humanitarian – is what has earned him such a loving following. It’s also the dividing line between Good and his peers.

White Light Rock and Roll Review - Matthew Good

White Light Rock and Roll Review

Matthew Good
Universal Records.

SCQ Rating: 68%

If you feel like this record sticks out like a sore thumb in the Matthew Good discography, it does: it’s the only MG full-length to forego a well publicized marketing pitch, written lyrics in the liner notes and his mug on the front sleeve. Although none of these factors are telling on their own, the combination of the three explains much about Matthew Good circa 2004. Married, settled and, for the first time while under public scrutiny, visibly self-satisfied, Good had accidentally settled his career in a similar fashion: the material was still unmistakably his, but the delivery felt complacent. Like countless artists before him, the romance and money that Good’s success afforded him had stolen that passionate craving that wrote such intensely personal songs, and thusly, the talented songwriter looked backward.

As the record’s premise and title suggest, Good opted to engage the history of rocknroll head on; the classic Who-affected riffs of ‘Ex-Pats of the Blue Mountain Symphony Orchestra’, the modern Strokes-appeal of ‘Poor Man’s Blue’, and all the meat-and-potatoes rock he’d virtually laughed at through the Audio of Being era. Although these genre exercises rarely rival his past work, White Light Rock and Roll Review offers a decent cross-section of worthy Good compositions. Like the majority of Avalanche, his political oeuvre is reinforced by ‘Alert Status Red’ and ‘Blue Skies over Bad Lands’, both fine additions that surpass their obvious opinionated leanings (unlike ‘North American For Life’, which by comparison feels scrawled down like a bar-band’s effigy).

While his dedication to troubles of the world at large remains fervent, Good’s ever-potent lyrics of reflection save this album from becoming another blasé set of protest songs. The pedal-steel strummed ‘Empty Road’ is unmatched here, a lovely, idyllic song about growing into the world we’re faced with, while ‘It’s Been Awhile Since I Was Your Man’ strikes a nostalgic nerve that finds Good at his most candid. Neither of these highlights approaches the heart-wrought beauty of classics ‘Bright End of Nowhere’ or ‘Life From the Minimum Safe Distance’, but to Good’s credit, the majority of recording was completed in nine days – an intentional decision that helped capture these songs at their rawest incarnation.

After Loser Anthems’ experimentation and Avalanche’s lush arrangements, White Light Rock and Roll Review comes as a middling point; neither revisiting conquests won nor stepping forward with anything particularly new. Due to recording constraints and being pressed between two far more attention-grabbing albums, these songs have taken on a dark-horse status, occasionally ill-advised but splendid for a change of pace.