Artist Spotlight: the Matches

I must first admit, that the inspiration for this post came from watching the following video for the Matches video "Salty Eyes".

The video, is inspired by the Bob Dylan film clip for "Subterranean Homesick Blues" which is a classic video of him flipping through keywords of the song all written on poster board. The Matches take on the video, as you can see, has them heaving various decrepit analog TV's displaying them in front of a steady cam before dropping them gloriously on the floor. It truly is a work of art.

Thus I decided to look into the band a bit more, and discover all I could about them in our first artist spotlight!

The matches are comprised of Shawn Harris on vocals and guitar, Matt Whalenon the drums, Justin San Souci on the Bass and Vocals, and lastly Jon Devoto on Guitar and Vocals. The band hails Oakland, CA as their home turf, similar to bands like Green Day and Rancid, and musicians like Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson. Originally calling themselves the Locals, the band members diligently promoted themselves at rock concerts and other venue's where music fans could be found. After a run in with another band titled "the Locals" out of Chicago - they changed their name to "the Matches", and kept blazing their rock music.

DISCOGRAPHY:

E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals


The first album cut by "the Matches" after their name change. The title cleverly poke's at having to change the band's name. They first released this album sans record label, after having recorded much of it in their garage, bedroom, or wherever they could find room. After being picked up on Epitaph records, the tracks were remastered, and re-released with the new label's mark on the album.

Decomposer


The sophomore effort by the matches fully released under their label Epitaph. The album features a full fledged mick of rock-saviour punk, as well as power pop ballads. It has quickly risen to popularity amongst the California music scene. The band went crazy during production of the album, and had nine separate producers each produce a track from the album. According to the albums wiki page, "John Feldmann of the band Goldfinger, Mark Hoppus of +44, Tim Armstrong of Rancid and Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion and owner of the label Epitaph Records are among the A-list production team".

For More Info:
the Matches Website
the Matches MySpace
the Matches on Wikipedia

What do you think of the Matches? Leave your comment below!