- Title: USA: Matchbox Twenty strikes a new chord with their latest album
- Date: 18th October 2007
- Summary: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (RECENT) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ROB THOMAS SAYING: "It's hard to write a personal song when you're all writing together. So what we would wind up doing is, we could create a musical, something that made us feel something musically and then we would end up writing about how, if it was a happy song, where is it going? Someone would come up with a line, and it would be, oh that's what the song is about, and we would all get together and write the song about the way that the music would make us feel."
- Embargoed: 2nd November 2007 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Usa
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA2JYICNFFJEHSGA4AGW6CTUD3I
- Story Text: Matchbox Twenty moves a little further from their grunge roots into the realm of pop music with their latest album "Exile on Mainstream," a greatest hits record that includes six new tracks.
After a three-year hiatus, rock band Matchbox Twenty released an album of greatest hits that it hopes will carve out a new direction for the group. Two of the band's four members, singer Rob Thomas and guitarist Paul Doucette, say the album, "Exile on Mainstream," may be the closing of one chapter but also the beginning of another with six new songs.
"Exile" is the band's first album without Adam Gaynor, who left the group in 2005. Matchbox also worked with a new producer, while drummer Doucette made the transition to guitar. Thomas said with so many changes in the mix, a new sound was inevitable.
"With all those ingredients in place, all we had to do was go in and try and write what we thought were good songs and they were going to be different. They had to be," said Thomas, who has also carved out a successful solo career.
The six new tracks on "Exile" are mostly bright and bouncy, a far cry from the group's grunge roots. The album's first single, "How Far We've Come," is an infectious pop stomper and is only the second title this year, following Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder," to reach the top 10 of the Adult Top 40 in just three weeks.
And that's a credit to all band members; for the first time, all members of Matchbox played an active role in the song-writing process. Thomas said that after being together for 11 years, the group has learned how to work well as a single unit.
"Let you ego get out of the way and just let a good song come through. We all trust each other enough now and our sense of what a good song is that, it's not about your idea. It's not about you being the impetuous for anything. It's just about what comes out of that."
"Exile," which is currently in stores, is a two-disc set -- one for the new songs, one for the retrospective. A music video interactive limited-edition package is also available. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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