by Hilary Johnson
The night started off all wrong. I got to the door with a couple friends, excited for this native San Franciscan, Matt Nathanson, to pop-ballad my boots off under the pretense of independent music. His sixth studio album (first on Vanguard Records) Some Mad Hope, was released in August and peaked at 60 in Billboards 200. Songs from the album have made it to TV shows NCIS, Private Practice, One Tree Hill, and Scrubs. I came in with high expectations, but was forced to leave them at the door.
I told them I was on the list, one of the perks of being a writer for an entertainment publication. So, I was in – no problem. As I turned to gesture towards my two friends who were joining me, I asked if they could come in with me. Blatantly and almost rudely, I was told no. So then we asked if we could buy tickets. Even more blatantly, and rather late in the game I might add, we were informed that the show was sold out. I was faced with abandoning my two compadres, leaving them outside of Jack Rabbits in the near sub-freezing temperature. Not exactly the way I wanted to start the evening.
As we stood outside the venue’s demure red doors, closed to everyone but me, I could hear Ingrid Michaelson playing inside. She was opening the show, and although I wasn’t familiar with her music I had friends who were. She received rave reviews, but none would come from me as I struggled to think of some way of avoiding abandonment.
Eventually, one friend left and walked back to his house, which luckily wasn’t too far off. The other friend was able to scrounge the $15 dollars for admission, but we were then uncouthly asked if we had been in line. Looking back at the twenty plus long line, that yes, we were at the front of and had been at the front of as we watched it form, trying to find a way to get inside, I demanded that we had in fact been in line. Something the doorman very well knew. His bad attitude was enough to make me turn around and leave had it not been for this article.
Finally, as people started pouring out of the doors after Michaelson’s show came to a close, we were admitted inside. It was crowded, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it would have been unsafe to admit my friends into the show. The crowd was mixed with gender and age, a wholesome rock and roll crowd. We grabbed some beers and made our way to the stage as Nathanson’s band setup.
A guy who looked just shy of a syringe was setting up the gear, tuning guitars, checking mics and whatnot. Was this the shiny pop throb I had seen on MySpace? He looked haggard and unkempt. As the rest of the band made their way to the stage I realized it was only the guitarist. Nathanson was just as clean and clever looking as always, and a toothy, charming grin confirmed my thoughts.
Nathanson is impressive. I will give him that. The band is extremely well rehearsed. They play smoothly and in unison. They groove with one another and the effect is a seemingly effortless gel of sound.
But after the third song, I started to wonder, how many “sounds” were we going to hear? So far… just one. All his songs sounded exactly the same! And the sappy, woe-is-me romantic… the I-love-to-be-in-love attitude of the songs got slightly tired after a few runs around the track. He sang about living in a “heartbreak world,” and wedding dresses. Seriously? I mean, either this guy really is a hopeless romantic, in which case, good luck dude, I can’t imagine any girl not getting tired of that, or he is a cheat. A fake. A charming grin that thinks singing about love is going to get girls to swoon and buy his less than fabulous album.
At one point my friend turned to me and said, “I think they keep changing the lighting to distract us from the fact that they are just playing the same song over and over again.” The lights turned from blue to red to white to red again. How all-American.
At another point I heard him croon the request to “show him how pretty the world is” and then subsequently heard someone next to me laugh and say, “Open your eyes.” It was just too much.
And then he started with the cover songs. As he started into a song that sounded very reminiscent of ‘Jessie’s Girl,’ Nathanson laughed and said, “F**k Rick Springfield! He can’t get to me!” The band then played part of ‘Jessie’s Girl’ before blending it into his own song. Perhaps it was some pass at trying to make light of the fact that he was blatantly ripping off other people’s music, but it did strike me that the only time people were singing along was while they played other people’s music.
They proceeded to cover Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama, Kim Wilde’s Kids in America, Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf, and Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing. And some songs were just knock offs, but they never played the actual cover, like Rolling Stone’s Paint it Black. What? Seriously? Did people pay $15 to hear some guy sing boring love songs and covers? What?
Halfway through the show I left the crowd and moved to the bar. I felt more comfortable from a distance. But the crowd seemed to love it. People cheered the entire way through. He was charming and great at connecting with the audience. And like I said, the band was remarkably good. It was good, it just wasn’t… good.
Perhaps the night had just started off wrong. Rudeness does not normally equate to a good time. But I was let down. It lacked ingenuity. It was catchy. It was melodic. It was romantic. But it was obvious and they tried way too hard. However, I will say it wasn’t entirely bad. He was really fun to look at and the music didn’t make my ears bleed. It just didn’t make them sing either.
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