Aging is Graceless - The Matches

The Matches of Oakland California have been busy carving out their own personal niche in the volatile pop punk market. They’ve created quite a stir of buzz with their second release Decomposer. I had the pleasure of shooting off some quiz questions to vocals / guitar boy Shawn Harris.

To start with what created the biggest media interest: The Matches created Decomposer with the help from the right people. Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, Goldfinger’s John Feldman, Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus, 311’s Nick Hexum and Epitaph founder Brett Gurewitz all lent a helping hand on the album. I assumed this might be a fairly daunting experience and as such asked Shawn about it: “At first it's daunting, but after about five minutes when Tim Armstrong is offering you a Diet Coke, and he's proudly showing pictures of Joe Strummer and himself, and his Mom is coming over later in the afternoon to bring the hard drive he forgot in Oakland, you forget he's written some of your favorite songs, and just become focussed on tracking some of someone else's new favorite songs. At that point, it's all that you or Tim can care about. And Brett G from Bad Religion? He's like Dad. He's got the label money in his pocket, and you have to ask him when you wanna go out on a weeknight. Politically, he's a bit radical compared to my own Dad, but family aside, we're very comfortable around him now.”

And what pray tell, does one learn from an experience such as that? “One learns that every hit 311 song was mostly tracked live, the old fashioned way, where everyone rocks out together on the same take. Nick Hexum wanted our track to have that timeless vibe. You learn that John Feldmann thinks that a toaster sometimes sounds better than a drumset. You learn that Mark Hoppus is a damn fine tambourine player.”

I want to put the best grab in here, before you get bored. I pointedly cited a reviewer’s claim that The Matches had lost their teen angst that helped make them famous and then asked this– how does a band age gracefully in a pro emo / angst era? The eloquent response I received was “I don't know how to respond to the reviewer's claim-- but certainly aging is graceless, and angst is personally undesirable.”

Oh that’s deep. He continued “Our album Decomposer is about dethreading, and becoming lost in a world that will never be ours--trying to find a place to be okay with who we are-- failing--trying again. I want to be happy. I'm doing the goddamn best that I can. I will keep trying until I get it right. To be honest though, I've never yet managed to write a positive song, so fans worried of change need not be afraid of the brightside coming about too rapidly. Ha.”

I’d also read an interview where that said Decomposer had a ‘death fixation’ but is an album without depression, I inquired as to how that worked. “Death is pending, sure, but to be conscious of this implies that we are alive, and what better way to celebrate this state than to live?” I suppose so…

Now to put the painfully obvious question out for your skimming pleasure: Who has influenced you the most during the course of your careers - musically and in life? “Our manager the Wizard, Miles Hurwitz, taught me about songwriting when I was 18 years old. I learned most of what I know from him. The rest I picked up from listening to the radio at age 12-- Radiohead, Weezer, Green Day, Bjork-- I listen to lyrics. I disect them and play with their parts, and try to learn WHY these certain songs speak to me, so that I can better speak to people like myself. I read books. Eggers, Wallace, Johnson- they do my job better than I-- they just don't put their words to music. Then of course Adam Jones of Tool, who is a huge inspiration on my art and animation... I could go on and” I somewhat wish he had…

Moving right along, in my research I noticed The Matches MySpace presence and appreciation. Like the supposedly astute journalist that I am, I probed further into this enigma with insightful questions…for example:

I posed: If you wanted to explain to someone the concept of MTV film clip editing you'd give them a fairly clear understanding if you showed them the clip for papercut skin on your MySpace page - is there a theme behind it the unsuspecting viewer is missing? “The video reflects our process of recording Decomposer. A slew of scenes, no comfort, just a big beautiful mess. The song 'Papercut Skin' is not meant to be written by me, but by a collective working people, ranging from burger flippers, to pilots, to basketball players. In our performance, we portray everyone, and the resulting vibe is this hectic montage of the frustrations of modern life.”

To top it all of, I wanted to know whether the world was ready for MySpace references – as per “MySpace romancer” in 'Papercut Skin'. “Is the world ready?! We thought we'd better to scramble to get the reference in before the world is OVER MySpace references. All is becoming more and more impermanent.” Seems I’m just not up with the times.

Catch The Matches when they hit Australian shores this month

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