Morgantown bandleader lets out his Frustrations in latest record
By Jim Phillips
August 16, 2007
I first heard Billy Matheny a couple of months ago at a singer/songwriter benefit concert in Marietta. Like the other artists on the bill, Matheny did only two songs, but he managed to stand out even in a lineup of mostly fine performers. I bought a CD from him after the show, and popped it in the deck on the drive home; by the time I got to Athens, I was a hardcore fan.
Matheny, who comes from Morgantown, W.Va., brings his band the Frustrations to the Casa Cantina tonight. Sharing the venue will be Erin Condo and the Talls. I would strongly recommend catching this show.
"Born of Frustration," the newest CD by Billy Matheny and the Frustrations, is a bracing gust of hard-charging, melodic pop-rock, with just a dash of country and a wee bit of acoustic folk. In terms of musical innovation, there's nothing on the record that hasn't been done a zillion times before - but Matheny and his band-mates play it all like it's some wondrous new toy, fresh out of the box.
On his Web site, Matheny lists The Replacements and Big Star among his influences, and you can hear those bands in the way his tunes drive pop hooks and soaring harmonies through a jangly, punky guitar storm.
The first band that came to mind when I heard the album, though, was Dramarama. The Frustrations give off a very different vibe, but with the same sense of a group that finds basic, tuneful rock music the most natural vehicle for the unique thing it's doing.
Though only 22, Matheny has been kicking around in various bands since his teens (including Cheap Truckers' Speed, The V-Necks and The Bookhouse Boys), and his songwriting is smart, confident, and alive with insight and feeling.
In "One Story Town," the most striking number on "Born of Frustration," he tells about a woman, not so young any more, who's had some lousy men in her life, and is now hunting for a new one. She finds a babysitter for the kids, gets dolled up, and hits the local music club, where she can feel the stares and derision from bartenders and half-dressed girls half her age.
"But she swears to God she's not gonna let it bring her down/the way the people talk, in this one-story town," Matheny sings, in a voice that seems to quiver with equal parts sarcasm and sympathy. "And she swears to God she's not gonna let it change her mind/but the search keeps getting harder, time after time." The drummer slams away ecstatically behind him, the harmonies lock in, the guitars snarl and chime, and the tune breaks your heart while it makes you dance.
The standouts on the record are mainly in this mode of hard-edged-pop-tune-with killer-chorus. "I Won't Be Around to Say I Told You So," for example, could be some undiscovered gem by the Grass Roots or the Hollies, fired up with a torrent of twangy guitar.
Other tunes pack more garage-band punch, like "Christless Streets," which spits out a refreshingly bad attitude right from the drumstick count-off: "None of my radio stations are tuning in/So it looks like I'm gonna have to settle for cassettes again," Matheny sneers. "There's faded writing on my five-dollar bill/It says 'In God We Trust and we always will'/But you know I think I'll spend it anyway/'Cause I never really thought my money had much to say."
On "Friday Night Alienation," Matheny takes his inner folksinger out for some air, in a world-weary finger-picked number that mockingly complains: "It seems like every sign can only say/I'll be an old man before my time one of these days/But I don't want to talk about it/The band's just starting to play."
Guitarist Haley Slagle adds strong second vocals to many of Matheny's tunes, and ends the album on a slightly bluesier note with her lead vocal on "Reckless," a torchy guitar ballad.
While still a relatively well-kept secret, when Matheny does come to a critic's attention, he tends to earn reviews even more enthusiastic than this one. A February 2004 notice in Graffiti magazine is typical, raving, "This kid is off the hook. He's a rockabilly folk hero who's one part Dylan, one part Alex Chilton and five parts gin and tonic. In the over crowded field of faceless, sound-alike James Taylor wanna-bes, Matheny stands out as an unbreakable wall of sincerity and spunk." Yeah, what they said.
Erin Condo and the Talls are touring behind the album "Leaving Songs," which despite its apparent insistence on being a concept album organized around the idea of breakups and departures, is a quite enjoyable foray into more-or-less straight, mandolin-flavored country balladry. Condo's singing is not extraordinary, but it's honest and impassioned, and her songs serve up the traditional fare of heartbreak and regret with a nice balance of raw emotion and restraint.??
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