Hoping the best folk rock band around gets a shot at the big time
As childlike and asinine as I know it is, I can’t help but feeling like a little part of me dies every time one of my favorite bands hits the mainstream. As much as I’d love them to have all of the money and recognition that comes with success, there is something wrong with hearing a band like the Arcade Fire or Bright Eyes playing in a department store. But things are different with Matt Pond PA.
That’s because Matt Pond and company have a generally appealing sound that I’d love to hear on a road, faces I’d love to see on billboards, and melodies that would translate into some spectacularly awful smooth jazz. In short, they’re like a good Dave Matthews Band.
Matt Pond PA isn’t afraid to stretch their genre labels to their fullest, bringing in acoustic and electric elements, often including a cellist, and tying it all together with a solid rhythm section. They are folk rock, but are among the best of the genre: folk enough to keep you repeating the lyrics to friends and rock enough to keep you from falling asleep.
Listening to any of their five full-length releases, I can’t help but make a comparison to Summerteeth-era Wilco. A country influence so faint its almost nonexistent. A talented, though not always memorable, vocalist is present in both equations, though Matt Pond isn’t nearly as raspy as Jeff Tweedy and the former’s arrangements are on the whole less rootsy.
With solid production, clever hooks, and excellent songwriting, Matt Pond PA has a little something of everything. Having played with bands diverse as Superchunk, Bikini Kill, Keane, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, they appeal to a wide range of tastes and might even (dare I say it?) sound good through the Wal-Mart PA.
Zach Pendleton’s column The Best You’ve Never Heard runs each week in Diversions. Comments and questions can be sent to him at zpendleton@cc.usu.edu.