Band of the Month – October 2005

First I’d like to note that the offers on both the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Bots Master theme songs have expired. If you really want to download those songs, youse-a gonna hafta find ’em youseselves. It’s sad, I know, but the dumping of excess weight saved me over 1.5MBs. Hooray!

On to the task at hand, this month’s “band” is the Canadian rocker Matthew Good. Anyone out of the loop might be inclined to ask “But isn’t it Matthew Good Band?” Then I would point out that “No.” True, there was a band, but that was ages ago. Sometime in between 2001 and 2003 (I can’t remember for sure, and I’m not going to look it up), the band broke up and Matt went out on his own. Word on the street is the breakup was caused by Matt’s assholic personality, and who’s to say differently. If you want to try to figure it out, the picture on the sidebar leads to his blog, and you can read into that if you really care. If not, you can keep reading this. It’s not like there’s anything better out there. Trust me, there isn’t.

It all started back in 1995, when the MGB released their first album, entitled Last of the Ghetto Astronauts. This was before I listened to them, so I’ve never heard this one, even though I’ve bought mostly every other MGB/Matt Good CD. The other one I don’t own was a half-assed attempt released two years later, featuring only five songs, two of them coming from the previous disc. Raygun may only have five songs, but they generally charge the normal CD fee of $15 for it, and I’m not shelling out $15 for five songs. Some places even bump it up to around $20. “Generation X-Wing” is a pretty damn good song, though. Almost makes it worth it.

My personal experience starts with Underdogs, which was released the same year as Raygun. I think the first MGB song I ever liked was the incredibly slow “Apparitions”. I still really like the song, but there are better ones out there. Other greats on the CD inclued “Everything is Automatic” and “Indestructible.” The next CD, Beautiful Midnight, was easily the peak of MGB’s success, being home to at least four hit singles. “Hello Time Bomb”, “Strange Days”, “Load Me Up” and “The Future is X-Rated” are all great, but don’t think that that’s all the album has to offer. “Giant” is a first-rate and somewhat touching song, and “Jenni’s Song” mixes a great chorus with a tune that I know is from another song. Or at least very similar. This is a great CD to start with if you’re just getting into MGB. My personal favourite of the MGB releases is their last, The Audio of Being. This one sounds different from the previous ones, or it does to me anyway. The sound gets a lot more serious and while I don’t stretch as far as to call it emo, some might apply that tag here. There are plently of good rock songs here, but the overall mood seems to be of a slower pace and has a more mature tone to it. Eventually, “Anti-Pop” hit the big time with some radio/TV play, but I think that’s all the mainstream world really saw of this album.

And that was when they split. Would this cause a big change in the music? No. Not really. As far as the music tells you, Matt was pulling all the strings, at least towards the end. There’s very little differenece between the Matthew Good Band and the Matthew Good solo act, so fans could breathe a sigh of relief. His first solo release, Avalanche, is fantastic and provides a great split between the moodier sound of The Audio of Being and the more rock-oriented previous CDs. Something for everyone here, and it even brought Matt back into the mainstream with the singles “Weapon” and “In A World Called Catastrophe”, the latter which had something of a thematic video (at least I think it was that song), presenting you with footage of the war on Iraq. While I generally look down upon political music (another story altogether), the song itself doesn’t explicitly touch on the subject, so I can deal with it.

The most recent album, White Light Rock & Roll Review is just as good, if not better than its predecessor. In fact, I often confuse some of the tracks between the two. More radio hits here, I’ve heard both “Alert Status Red” and “It’s Been a While Since I Was Your Man” get plenty of play on the local rock station. I personally like the uber-simplified “Put Out Your Lights” and hard-rocking “North American For Lofe”, but hey, if I chose what they played on the radio, I’d be the king of mainstream. And yes, I meant for that sentence to go nowhere. The cool note is that this is the only MGB/Matt Good CD (that I’ve listened to/can remember) that totes a hidden track. “Hopeless” is an excellent song that’s almost country, but I love it, and am very disappointed that it doesn’t show up on the upcoming greatest hits CD.

And speaking of that, In A Coma (October 11th, if you’re interested) will be released in not one, but two versions. The first is your regular greatest hits package with a couple new songs tacked on for fun. The second, though, is just mind-blowing. Not only is it two discs long, but the second disc is full of acoustic classics and rare songs. To top that all off, it also includes a DVD packed with videos, commentary, a documentary and all sort of other superfluous junk. As you may have guessed, I totally coozied when I heard about this one. It’s probably gonna cost a pretty penny though, and I’m not really looking forward to that part of the transaction. Other things I should mention include two EPs, Loser Anthems and Lo-Fi B-Sides, the latter of which was given a limited release, with only 500 copies produced. Too bad none of those copies made it into my grubby hands. The former also has some limited availability jargon associated with it, but I don’t feel like retyping my finds.

And so another Band of the Month segment comes to an end. Seriously, if you like Matthew Good and are thinking of picking up a CD, go with either Beautiful Midnight or one of his solo CDs. Of course, the impending release of the In A Coma anthology looms on the horizon, so you could always wait for that. There’s not much else to say, except for that tomorrow I’ll be putting up a new mini-review, somewhat related to today’s post, and I’m not gonna be making a post specifically to draw attention to it tomorrow. I’ll be too busy, because Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and MegaMan Zero 4 released yesterday, and Future Shop or EB should have them by tomorrow.

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