Over-production ruins new MGB release
By SAM DERHEIMER
Assistant Scene Editor
The album starts off with a rumble... "K-i-c-k-a-s-s! That's the way we spell success!" Had the Matthew Good Band only stuck to this theme, Beautiful Midnight, the band's latest studio album and first U.S. release, might have been much better.
As it is, this two-time double platinum Canadian rock band has done little to make a name for itself in the States. Along the lines of its northern brethren, The Tragically Hip, MGB is an honest and hard-working rock band that, though not for lack of trying, simply just lacks any noticeable edge that might separate it from an already over-polluted American rock scene.
Beautiful Midnight starts out strong with "Giant," one of the heavier tracks on the disc. The song closely follows the structural pattern of the majority of early 90s grunge tracks: verses constructed of soft, wailing guitar rifts loosely coupled with quietly lamenting vocals that quickly combine into an intense and unified chorus in which everyone seems to turn his instrument up a couple notches. And despite the realization that such a song structure is pretty much lifted directly from just about anything Pearl Jam or Soundgarden have ever written, the song works, and is easily one of the best on the album.
The problem is, while "Giant" might not be remarkably original, it is at least a good song — the same can not be said of the majority of the rest of the album. It's not so much that the rest of the songs on Beautiful Midnight are bad, they just aren't particularly great or even memorable for any reason.
However, the fault here may not lie completely with the band. Beautiful Midnight is an exceptionally tight album. Nothing is out of place. Every song is clean and polished and every note precisely where it should be. The problem is, by the end of the album, everything just starts to sound the same. It's virtually impossible to tell "A Boy and His Machine Gun" from "Failing the Rorschach Test" from "The Future is X-rated." With very few exceptions, the band is never allowed to truly cut loose of its tightly binding production chains and really rock.
The album is simply over-produced.
"Deep 6ix," one of the few songs in which Good is able to really explore his true rock identity is by far one of the stand-outs on Beautiful Midnight. Unlike almost every other track on the album, the guitar work is both creative and explosive, and the vocals are for once truly energetic and passionate. Where songs like "Load Me Up" are overly simplistic and little more than bland, "Deep 6ix" breaks from the mold and showcases the band's true ability to write quality rock music. Unfortunately, other than "Giant," "Deep 6ix" and perhaps the overtly cynical "Jenni's Song," MGB provides little to back this claim up.
The majority of Beautiful Midnight is unfortunately better summed up in a track like "Born to Kill." It's obvious that Good was attempting to create a song with real power and emotion, however with the strict pop limits apparently placed on his song writing (whether self-imposed or handed down), the song ends up lost in itself, and is left completely void of any real potency it ever had.
The same can be true of the band's first single off Beautiful Midnight, "Hello Time Bomb." It's not that "Hello Time Bomb" is a bad song, it's just that it is not a particularly good one either, and in the extremely fickle world of rock 'n' roll, that therefore makes it a bad song. The track, like much of the album, is heavily influenced by former new-wave acts like the Clash and the Police, but fails to truly translate those dynamics into anything that might really stick out today.
It's easy to discern that this band has some real talent. Perhaps if it is ever able to break free from such a stifling overly pop-oriented production, the Matthew Good Band might just come out with a remarkably good rock 'n' roll album.
All Scene Stories for Tuesday, March 6, 2001
