And what?
'And.'
Its an important word, its small in size but hefty in stature and its pretty important to the English language so lets not be thinking we're criticising the word but as album titles go, it's a bit shit isn't it? It may have some would class as a minimal classic design but it smacks of trying to be too clever for its own good so without even a note being played, Jonah Matranga finds himself on the back foot.
It's a bit of a collection, most of the album potters its way along sounding like Daniel Powter, which lets be honest, is never a good thing. He thinks hes had a bad day, what about all the people who've had the misfortune to chance upon his awful vocals and rinky-dink piano? Bad day, he doesn't know the meaning of the term. Anyways, we digress but you get the impression, its pretty limp solo-songwriter stuff where the main man has a heart that bleeds and wrings it out in every line.
This is thrown way off course with 'Not About A Girl Or A Place', which comes straight at you like every wanky American guitar pop band would sound like, they're all pretty much interchangeable so it doesn't really matter who you think of, it all sounds the same. In years gone by, this song would have been the far of Semisonic or Train and in recent months, The Hold Steady would have it in their arsenal but at the moment it's the hands of Jonah and his backing band.
There are a lot of different influences on the vocals, sounding like The Bluetones, particularly on 'I Want You To Be My Witness' and 'Every Mistake', this comparison wouldn't usually be a good thing but they manage to channel the moments when The Bluetones were good. Okay, that's going to leave a lot of people scratching their heads but 'Putting Out Fires' from their debut was an under-rated classic, its acoustic charm and aching beauty being the jewel in the bands output. Matranga nears the heights of this song in the middle section of the album and with a chorus or two; he could have matched it but just falls short.
Matranga does have a history of playing with so many styles and bands and that makes it all the more disappointing that the album manages to slip by like the piece of inconsequential fluff that it is.