Matchbox Twenty - More Than You Think You Are

Feel - 4
Disease - 3
Bright Lights - 4
Unwell - 3
Cold - 3
All I Need - 3
Hand Me Down - 3
Could I Be You - 3
Downfall - 3
Soul - 3
You're So Real - 3
The Difference - 3
Total - 38 stars / 12 tracks = 3.17 stars, normalized to 3.1 stars

I assume that everyone who grew up in my generation had a defining album for their adolescence. For me, before I discovered Our Lady Peace's Gravity, that album was More Than You Think You Are. For one lengthy period of angst and turmoil, there was no piece of art more relevent to my current situation than this CD. For when I felt like there was something wrong with me (which was a lot), there was "Unwell," and, most uncannily, when the girl I liked graduated and moved off to university, there was "Bright Lights" to comfort me.

I don't think I was ever concerned with whether or not this was good music. It was resonant music that became the soundtrack to nearly a year of my life. In retrospect, "Bright Lights" does stand up. It's a pretty song that still evokes some of those old feelings of longing and closure-less broken relationships.

The 4-star rating for "Feel" is half for that song, and half for "Unwell." In the first case, the driving rhythms of the chorus make "Feel" memorable, but it struggles to get there. "Unwell" has a unique sound, but isn't as great once you strip away the nostalgia.

I feel the same way about the rest of the album as I did when I first listened to it back in '02 and '03. It's not an unpleasant listening experience, but little, if any of it, is going to make regular circulation on the ol' iPod (except then, it was my Windows Media Player Playlist).