Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Sticking with nice-guy rock, Matchbox barely ignites


By Darryl Morden


LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) -
Every era seems to have
hit-making bands skilled enough with pop-rock hooks and
structure to score plenty of radio hits yet have no impact
beyond that. Think Huey Lewis and the News in the 1980s. And
Matchbox Twenty today.


But to its credit, the group has been around now since the
mid-'90s, and even before singer Rob Thomas hooked up with
Santana and dabbled in the solo world, the band had amassed an
ample catalog of hits. Those numbers, such as "3 a.m." and a
nicely rearranged, gentle version of "If You're Gone," were
among the many crowd-pleasers for the fans filling the arena,
most of whom were in their 30s and 40s. Thomas didn't overplay
the rock star thing, either; in fact, he came off more as a
regular guy fronting his pals.

Themes of romantic fear and emotional sickness surfaced
again and again, but there was little depth, just a lot of
diary hurt. The band made up for it with bittersweet melodies
and mostly compact playing without excess, including
short-burst, standard-issue guitar solos and bits of lyrical
piano. There was even some energetic bar-band rocking on such
new songs as the opening "How Far We've Come" and the Motown
beat-pushed "I'll Believe You When."

The problem is that while the group understands the
trappings, it still generally comes off as disconnected from
any sense of rock history, even when it played a
Beatles-by-way-of-Joe Cocker version of "She Came in Through
the Bathroom Window."

Before the new song "These Hard Times," Thomas asked the
audience to pull out their cell phones, BlackBerrys and such to
hold them high and wave them. He should know better; the
audience does that on their own, moved to do so or not at all.
You don't ask. And the song, whose title could've opened the
door to political commentary, turned out to be just a
washed-out, vague midtempo ballad.

Matchbox Twenty might be warm and fuzzy, but sparks are
few, and there's no fire. Second-billed Alanis Morissette, back
in the game again, showed more heart in her one-hour spot.

Although tagged as an angry young woman with her 1996
scorned-lover rant "You Oughta Know," Morissette soon became
the ever-maturing Earth mother who's all about finding one's
personal Zen.

While the mystical psychedelic swirl-conjuring moments in
her set were more mumbo-jumbo than really deep thinking, the
essentially optimistic songs from her "Jagged Little Pill"
album debut of a dozen years ago, including "Hand in My Pocket"
and "You Learn," still hold up well, and her preview of new
material indicates that she's still on that path of
affirmation.

The evening's opener was Mute Math, perhaps best known for
last year's electro-voice reworking of the "Transformers" theme
for the blockbuster film's soundtrack album.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

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