Artist: Matchbox 20
Album: Mad Season
Release Date: May 23, 2000
Mad Season was another early addition to my now humongous music collection, one of those discs I burned a hole in (back in the days before iPods ruled the Earth). Looking back, it’s pretty obvious this was one I bought solely because I dug singles “If You’re Gone” and “Bent”.
Don’t get me wrong; Mad Season has some real gems beyond the ubiquitous singles. The bittersweet farewell of “Rest Stop” marks how good a storyteller Rob Thomas can be, and “Black and White People”, in spite of it being a fairly textbook Matchbox 20 cut, is still an enjoyable track. But Matchbox 20 works best when they keep things moving, and too often Mad Season tries to slow it down, killing the energy and not replacing it with anything meaningful. Songs like “Bed of Lies” and “The Burn” are obvious filler, and the album wouldn’t lose anything in their absence other than a few minutes of runtime. But alas, for all its faults, Mad Season remains a sentimental favorite of mine, something I still pull out (in tattered CD form) on occasion just for the hell of it from time to time.
Matchbox 20 – If You’re Gone [iTunes] (YSI)
==TJ==
Filed under: Album A Day | Tagged: 2000s, Album A Day, Matchbox Twenty
