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Alpha) Matthew Good – Hospital Music

Many fans who stuck through the dropping of the Band from Matthew Good’s title also frequent his site enough to know about the personal demons he’s battle for the last two years. For many, it was information that was sometimes uncomfortable to read about. If anything has been obvious about Matt, though, it’s that honesty trumps all with him, whether you want to hear it or not. For those who weren’t able to take his confessionals in stride, consider Hospital Music your chance to hear some of those same threadbare commentaries in a more palatable way – to some of his best post-band work yet. For possibly the first time in his career, this album starts off with one of the album’s strongest songs (“Champions of Nothing”), throwing away his previous habit of having a “warm-up” before the album proper starts. From there, anything goes – his sociopolitical commentary is slightly less sarcastic and more sardonic, with more of an apparent “take this to heart when you turn this album off” elbow in the ribs than he did with White Light. The music of some of his keystone songs almost sound more country-folk playful than in recent memory, but is done with such an incredible sense of the subjective effect that one can almost see him winking at you as he breaks himself and others down (mainly one specific other person, of course). One could mistake the album for almost being lethargic at times, but don’t be fooled; the medicated warmth pervading songs like “99% Of Us Is Failure” is calculated with such precision as to slow your tongue, your brain, your movement until you’re unable to do anything but fill the spaces in the sparseness of the track with only the sounds and images that you ever could (his admissions of “I know it’s real slow” seem, in the moment, to ask you to understand the importance of the composition of the song in every way).