Customer Reviews

Underdogs

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I find it sad that MGB is relatively unknown here in the U.S. Underdogs is a solid album for people new to the band's music. Underdogs trails Beautiful midnight slightly for best MGB album in my opinion but is definitely worth picking it up. If your a MGB fan you must own this album. It's a key album to fallow the band as they grew in their music. If your new to MGB the same applies to you. You'll see how Matthew uses powerful introcpective lyrics along with soaring guitar to make truly beautiful music. MGB helped me gain a new respect for music and changed the way I view it to this day. Pick this album up and I'm sure they will do the same for you.

Back in the days of '97, I stumbled across this then little known group. I was interested, so I picked up their CD and threw it into my pile. But over the years, I've just found myself pulling it out more and more, even as Good began releasing other things, I remained glued to this gem of a CD.
There's not a bad song on here. It has a great mix from hard hitting (Deep Six) to slow greatness (Apparations); from pure fun to hear (Middle Class Gangsters & Rico)to moving emotional peices (Prime Time Deliverance & Change Of Season). The album's so great that I find it hard to find a pure favorite, as it varies on my mood at the time. But if I did have to pick one overall, I'd say I love Prime Time Deliverance the most.
Long story short, if you are at all interested in this album, by all means check it out. You'll find it's well worth your listen.

It is truly remarkable to hear what people think about Matthew Good Band. I would propose, if you have a few minutes, a study - to read all the reviews of "Beatiful Midnight" and "Underdogs" (a good sampling). I have done so. WHat I have found is that most reviewers love Matthew Good Band. They love Matt Good's lyrical prowess. They love the riffs. They love something. That certainly is not startling or remarkable.

What I find startling and remarkable is the "songs that I love" portion of the reviews. Almost every track gets named in the "songs I love" category. When one considers the fact that most album releases today have 3 or 4 "hits" connected by 6 to 8 filler "throwaway" tracks, the fact that every song on a MGB album could be named a "favorite" is amazing and rare.

For me, I look to the first eight songs of "Underdogs." What is left to say about "Apparitions" that hasn't been said already. I am a huge fan of "My Out of Style is Coming Back." I am not even sure why. It is your standard MGB rocker but perhaps there is some power in the chorus of "My Out of Style is Coming Back" that gets me. "Everything is Automatic" is the kind of song you want to have blaring as you go racing down the highway. Perhaps the most powerful song (for me) on the disc is "Primetime Deliverance."

If the album ended there, I would say that it is a great album but it keeps going and delivering the goods.

All in all, an outstanding effort. MGB proves you can rock AND have lyrics that mean something at the same time.

A lot of people think it's too bad this record never really made it to the American mainstream, but I think it's kind of a good thing. We all know that bands seem better when they're not so popularized (although they did have huge popularity here in Canada in the last few years). That's not to say that I haven't "converted" all my friends and family living in the US into MGB fans, however! It's just that the American mainstream has a way of killing the best music through overpopularization. The Canadian mainstream, too, but as much as I do hate it, MuchMusic is not as bad as MTV. It's getting there, though. So, I like the way that MGB's music is trickling in increments down the the US, mostly by word of mouth instead of shiny media distribution. Then it's the music that's driving the popularity and not the image.

Anyways, Underdogs - this is the album that broke them into the Canadian mainstream. The band wrote it when they were relatively unknown. THERE IS NOT ONE SONG THAT I DO NOT LOVE ON THIS CD, and I am picky - I like my music hard, smart, artistic, catchy and emotional (NOT emo, I mean moody and startling) all in one. I bought this awhile after getting Beautiful Midnight, which is either equally genius to or somehow surpasses Underdogs, I'm not sure yet. I bought it for Apparitions, which I can still listen to today and declare it to be a perfect song, as much as I've heard it over and over. This album is more... raw, I think, compared to the band's later releases - less than Last Of The Ghetto Astronauts, but LOTGA wasn't put together as well as the others.

Underdogs is more quirky and happily sarcastic compared to the albums that came after, with songs like Rico, Indestructable, Middle Class Gangsters and Look Happy, It's The End of the World (which starts with a jumpy punk riff and turns into a strange, dark bass beat layered beneath Matt's paranoid vocals: "where will you be this afternoon?/I cut off all my fingers"). I'd say this album is more hyper than the two later releases. Deep Six kicks off the CD with Dave Genn's major guitar distortion, not an angry song but very in-your-face with Matt's whirlwhind of frustrated lyrics, and is quite catchy.

I'll say it now: Matt is a lyrical genius. Although I don't agree with everything he does, he is a great artist. His vocals stand out throughout the album, and although they don't make straight sense most of the time, it's open to interpretation, and the arrangement somehow makes sense in a nonsensical way. He's got a very paranoid style of singing that would seem like it gets annoying after awhile, but it never really does. In this album, it has an obvious angry edge to it, while in Beautiful Midnight and Audio Of Being it's more controlled and used as an instrument. On Underdogs it sounds like the band's just having fun... there's something of raw beauty on this album, a kind of quirkiness that shows in Dave's guitars, piano and organ which bring in this great originality on songs like Prime Time Deliverance, which at first seems like a sweet, slow song, but has Matt singing about the smut of the world and of a girl committing suicide ("They found her in her room/wearing a pink bunny suit/and sour cherry lipstick/hanging from the closet door/her eyes her wide maybe to despise..."). There's this weird kind of beauty-from-the-mundane-kitsch quality about Underdogs.

Underdogs is the most deliberate in its sweetness-to-hardness. Change of Season starts sweet and slow, but holds a desperation in its lyrics and leads into a great, hardly-controlled guitar solo, which then leads erupts into a beautiful last verse accompanied by piano. Same with Apparitions and the acoustic wonder The Inescapable Us, in the sense that there is a kind of lovely melancholy found between Matt's frustration and Dave's delirious guitars. (In my opinion, the drums and bass start to stand out more from Beautiful Midnight on.)

Underneath the kitsch, the sarcasm and the frustration, there is a moving tenderness found in every song. The whole album is very grotesque and emotional in this way. The lyrics on this album follow no logical pattern and is a kind of train-of-thought storytelling, but I like that sort of thing, and they're put together cleverly. The musical arrangement is pretty much perfect compared to the trash out there. Compared to their later releases, it's less polished... but in this case that's not a bad thing at all, seeing the pure energy and beauty that comes out of Underdogs.

Upon buying this album i was literally blown away by the quality of the music, deepness of lyrics and by the great flow of the album from start to finish. It's nice to see a band sing about meaningful things! Including hits like "Apparitions", "Everything Is Automatic", "Indestructible", & "Rico" and including in-depth songs like "Prime Time Deliverance" & "Change Of Season"-- makes this album a MUST HAVE. This album has made me a MGB fan for life!!! Hope You Enjoy..

Matthew Good can really write! This album, when you listen to it, you feel yourself singing along and actually relating to the lyrics. This album is ALOT better than "LotGA." "Rico," the song that Matthew Good has come to hate, is the by far the catchiest, and is everyone`s favourite song off this CD. Buy this CD and you won`t be disappointed.

matthew good band is a perfect example of canadian rockers proving they can rock loud n' proud! this cd is awsome, with entertaining and intellectual (though usually self-depreciating) lyrics. I recommend this cd to people who are looking for a rocking cd with a few good mellow tunes and great alternative tunes. enjoy.

Buy this album for the standout track "apparitions" which evokes thoughts of insecurity, paranoia, love, introspect and features Matthew Goods outstanding vocal performance.

A recurring thought I keep having while listening to any of the Matthew Good cds I own is that he's bitter for some mysterious reason- which shows in some of the lyrics.

He writes lyrics that make you think about whatever it is, say in "indestructible", he "comes back for you, a perfect version of myself."

You even get self-deprecating lyrics in "rico", bearing the good line "everybodys gotta be something, me I'm garbage/stupid/loaded"... and what-have-you. Fun to sing along to and its not overly commercial (so you don't get sick of it).

The only bad thing about the Matthew Good Band is the failure of their record company(ies) to market them effectively in the United States.
If the buyer purchases this CD there is no reason to purchase Beautiful Midnight because of the duplication of songs.
In my opinion Underdogs is the band's best work.

If you're a male teen and you're from Canada, chances are you have this album. Matthew Good Band is the best canadian band and this is one of the best albums ever written, recorded and released. this album defines the 90's era for those who have grown up in the Great North.