The Matches - A Band in Hope

After a start playing fairly ordinary pop-punk on their debut and an encouraging sense of experimentation on its follow-up, Oakland quartet The Matches don't seem to know exactly what they're doing on their third album. On the one hand, many songs draw inspiration not only from old-fashioned slickly commercial AOR hard rock (the fist-pumping roots of "Their City" and "We Are One" lead back to Bon Jovi) but also from current mainstream Top 40 paradigms. No kidding: the bouncy singsong pop of first single "Wake the Sun" could, with only the barest minimum of alteration in production style and arrangement, potentially be a chart-topping single for someone like Natasha Bedingfield or Jordin Sparks. Read More