![]() "14 Balloons," while derivative, is just a dynamite opening song, because you have no idea what to expect once it ends. The incredibly short EP starts off with the incredibly short "14 Balloons." It's my favorite track off this 5 song EP, because it's the only track off the disc that doesn't directly ape one of the band's influences. What Matchbook Romance doesn't have, though, is an ounce of originality in their collective bodies. That's not to say it's terrible or anything. So please, if you hate this, don't blame us. I had never even heard the band until I got this EP in the mail a few weeks ago. I posted the story, Brett Gurewitz downloaded them, the rest is history. Basically what happened was it was a slow news day and someone had submitted news about some Poughkeepsie, NY band called the Getaway who had new MP3s up. But besides that glaring omission, we had no input about this band being signed to the big E. ![]() No, that does not mean we endorse them in any way.įirst off, they didn't even bother to thank us in the liner notes. But they’re big and clumsy in a way that super-sizes the enjoyability.Yes, this band got signed to Epitaph because of our website. So what we’re left with is some impressively solid songs - in particular “What a Sight”, which soars with such sweeping, redemptive beauty that it sounds like it belongs less on a goth album and more on Abbey Road - as well as some filler, played with the same undeniable bravado, but in the end still filler. But the consistency isn’t there yet.Įven so, it’s difficult to be harsh on them for missing their sprawling-epic vision, given that they placed the bar so high. There are flashes of brilliance –“Say It Like You Mean It” just bleeds teen ego with the line “It’s like saying we had luck with a three leaf clover / The only times you loved me was when you weren’t sober”. Moreover, Jordan’s lyrics, though earnest and hitting all the goth expectations, never reach the grandiose depth or biting wit of his aspirations. A few clunkers, such as the should-have-been-cut “Fiction” and the unnecessary “I Wish You Were Here”, also kill the momentum at the most inopportune times. They’re both good songs, they just sound utterly incongruous next to each other. This is most painfully evident when “Goody, Like Two Shoes” - an enormous, seven-minute anthem - is followed up with the hand-clapping cheekiness of “Monsters”. It’s an admirable try, but it’s really pretty damn hard to try for Muse’s grand prog-rock on one hand, and grasp for My Chemical Romance’s poppy wit on the other. The production helps them along, enormous, yet never overshadowing the organic sound.įunnily, though, the album still never gets where it wants to be. Matchbook Romance certainly pulls off the confidence - they never sound anything less than self-assured throughout the album. It’s a risky move without the same absurd confidence pulling it all together, such endeavors easily (and often) fall into self-parody. Voices is the sound of a band that, having proven its chops with a solid debut and desperately anxious to avoid a sophomore slump, has self-consciously decided to take it to the next level. Musically, they’ve maintained their natural dark melodicism, while reinventing everything else this disc sounds more like heavy metal than emo. Every goth, punk-pop, and hardcore convention seems put in a blender here and spun to overdrive witness the chuggingly huge riffs of “Surrender”, the slit-my-wrists singing of “Portrait”. There’s no question: Voices is ambitious. Andrew Jordan’s voice is deeper now, the sound is richer, the guitars are louder, and they’re laying down an epic of goth-rock almost ridiculous in its proportions.Īnd the scary thing is, they do come quite close to succeeding. Forget the straight-ahead, no frills emo-punk of their debut. That one sentence - about the CD case - just about describes Matchbook Romance’s second album as a whole. Big, black, and chunky, and rendered with half-gothic, half-cartoony artwork that’s both terribly cool and terribly cheesy.
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