Matthew Good and Vancouver break up
By Cameron Kroetsch, Staff Writer
Issue date: 11/26/09 Section: Film & Music
When doing a Google search recently I was confronted by the article I wrote about a Matthew Good show in 2007. Yes, the article that all of his loyal fans detested. It made me think that it might be time to reprise my writing on the once-rocking Canadian songster. Since he's put out a new album and has been giving interviews, material to comment on abounds.
His new album certainly caught my attention, I'll give it that. Vancouver surprised me. I wasn't expecting a relatively well-known home-grown artist to name an album after a Canadian city. It's not very common. Not even The Hip or BTO have gone as far as Matt Good. I wasn't the only one who was surprised by the title of the album. When Matt recently sat down to chat with Alan Cross (ExploreMusic), it was one of the first questions that Alan asked him. Like me, Cross wanted to know why he chose to name an album after the city of Vancouver.
Matt didn't really answer him. His dialogue was permeated with "I guesses," "you knows," "rights," and "absolutelys"-for a songwriter, it was shockingly vague and limp.
After listening to his interview with Cross, it seemed to me that Matt was fed up with modern Vancouver. He waxed nostalgic about the old scene and relayed snippets of conversations with friends about the good old days. He was unapologetically disconnected. The album seems to be more of the same, but I honestly can't tell for sure. Its songs don't necessarily have connections to Vancouver. According to Matt himself, the opening track "Last Parade" was written about the economic recession in the United States. "The Vancouver National Anthem" contains almost nothing national or anthemic, and is generic enough that it could be about any city with similar geographic features. The final track on the album gets its title from a drawing that Matt did in 2006 while he was in the hospital. The song, "Empty's Theme Park," looks further back, away from present-day Vancouver, to a time when Matt was younger, pulling off pranks and staying up all night. This album is all over the place. At least Matt's opinion of Vancouver can be pinpointed. In his interview with Cross, Matt complains that there aren't any good venues in the city anymore, and that those that remain aren't doing things right. He laments the music scene he once enjoyed at the Cruel Elephant, the Commodore, and the Smilin' Buddha. I find it cheeky for Matt to complain that Vancouver lacks "that lower level of interaction within the music community" while he sits in his basement, alone, in suburbia, wizarding together album demos with GarageBand.
I'm not from Vancouver, and so I'll have to take Matt's word for it and concede that maybe "the edge of Vancouver is lost." But I can't concede that it's dead. Rather than help to revitalise the music community, or one of his old haunts, or even to support a Vancouver artist (like Springsteen did with Gaslight Anthem), Matt Good seems happy to thin out his Canadian fan-base, and tour with a band from Victoria. It looks like Matt and Vancouver have broken up.
I can only hope to impart some advice to the city of Vancouver as it licks its wounds. Change the locks, and don't return his phone calls.
His new album certainly caught my attention, I'll give it that. Vancouver surprised me. I wasn't expecting a relatively well-known home-grown artist to name an album after a Canadian city. It's not very common. Not even The Hip or BTO have gone as far as Matt Good. I wasn't the only one who was surprised by the title of the album. When Matt recently sat down to chat with Alan Cross (ExploreMusic), it was one of the first questions that Alan asked him. Like me, Cross wanted to know why he chose to name an album after the city of Vancouver.
Matt didn't really answer him. His dialogue was permeated with "I guesses," "you knows," "rights," and "absolutelys"-for a songwriter, it was shockingly vague and limp.
After listening to his interview with Cross, it seemed to me that Matt was fed up with modern Vancouver. He waxed nostalgic about the old scene and relayed snippets of conversations with friends about the good old days. He was unapologetically disconnected. The album seems to be more of the same, but I honestly can't tell for sure. Its songs don't necessarily have connections to Vancouver. According to Matt himself, the opening track "Last Parade" was written about the economic recession in the United States. "The Vancouver National Anthem" contains almost nothing national or anthemic, and is generic enough that it could be about any city with similar geographic features. The final track on the album gets its title from a drawing that Matt did in 2006 while he was in the hospital. The song, "Empty's Theme Park," looks further back, away from present-day Vancouver, to a time when Matt was younger, pulling off pranks and staying up all night. This album is all over the place. At least Matt's opinion of Vancouver can be pinpointed. In his interview with Cross, Matt complains that there aren't any good venues in the city anymore, and that those that remain aren't doing things right. He laments the music scene he once enjoyed at the Cruel Elephant, the Commodore, and the Smilin' Buddha. I find it cheeky for Matt to complain that Vancouver lacks "that lower level of interaction within the music community" while he sits in his basement, alone, in suburbia, wizarding together album demos with GarageBand.
I'm not from Vancouver, and so I'll have to take Matt's word for it and concede that maybe "the edge of Vancouver is lost." But I can't concede that it's dead. Rather than help to revitalise the music community, or one of his old haunts, or even to support a Vancouver artist (like Springsteen did with Gaslight Anthem), Matt Good seems happy to thin out his Canadian fan-base, and tour with a band from Victoria. It looks like Matt and Vancouver have broken up.
I can only hope to impart some advice to the city of Vancouver as it licks its wounds. Change the locks, and don't return his phone calls.
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