More Than You Think You Are

For some reason or other, the name Matchbox Twenty has become a sort of shorthand for a whole genre of rather dull, undistinguished, inexplicably popular US rock. A kind of American Stereophonics, if you will. More Than You Think You Are isn’t going to change many minds round our way, just as it is certain to shift units like they’re going out of fashion across the Atlantic. If the album were only full of pleasant, almost soulful rockers like ‘Bright Lights’, ‘Unwell’ and ‘Downfall’, the world wouldn’t be a poorer place for its presence. Rob Thomas has got a voice that manages to transcend the limits of the material and his band are accomplished at producing a classic rock sound that is certainly preferable to the horrors of Nickelback and Creed. The cracks appear when they try and up the ante and head deeper into rock territory, resulting in the kind of creaking metal peddled by Whitesnake and Bon Jovi twenty years ago. Maybe if someone like Eddie Vedder were singing these songs they’d have a deeper resonance. Maybe the problem is all mine and Matchbox Twenty and I are always destined to remain worlds apart, but More Than You Think You Are does nothing more than leave this particular listener out in the cold.