Jonah Matranga always conjures up conflicting emotions for me. On the one hand, Far’s Water & Solutions is on my short list of favorite albums and I love many of the New End Original songs from Thriller, so I know what he is capable of in the best of situations. On the other hand, I’m embarrassed by the current incarnation of his on-stage melodramatic persona, his desperate attempts to convince fans that they are part of a transcendent experience when at his concerts, and his amplification of the emo frontman archetype to the point of caricature. While I admire, in a sense, what he is trying to do by making his music and the experience of it more personal and connected to the lives of his fans, there is no denying (particularly when watching the concert footage included in this DVD) that he often moves far beyond even simple cheesiness and into the realm of pure absurdity and pretense while pursuing that end.

There’s a Lot in Here is a DVD and CD release that concentrates on Jonah’s material from his Onelinedrawing and New End Original projects. The DVD includes concert footage from a show at Chain Reaction in Anaheim, CA and a living room concert at a friend’s house, as well as videos for all of the songs from the most recent Onelinedrawing release, Volunteers. The CD that accompanies the DVD is comprised of Jonah’s 12 favorite tracks from the two live performances. On the one-sheet that came with the promo copy of this release, Jonah says that There’s a Lot in Here is “a statement about me.” It certainly is.

I’m not sure that there is a more accurate word in the English language than “absurd” to describe what occurs in the hour long performance at Chain Reaction. From the moment Jonah steps on the stage and launches into his preamble, it is apparent that he is hyper-aware of the cameras recording this event and that he, in all his glory, is going to be mugging for those cameras as much as possible. Immediately, he informs everyone that “it’s difficult to have a transcendent… experience” at a concert, but that’s what he strives for and that’s what he wants to have tonight. Now, I’ve seen Jonah live a few times and I know that he has enough charisma to carry a show on his own, but telling your audience that you want to create a transcendent experience is a bit much. There’s so much ego involved in that statement. Shouldn’t there be a hint of genuine humility if you’re trying to sell us on the “man of the people” persona?

Jonah then proceeds to perform 12 songs, stopping in the middle of most of them to provide commentary, including one instance during “Hostage” when he points to a fan in the back and says, “Gotta stop for appreciation of you, back there, in the ski hat. You’re so far back there and you’re fuckin’ rocking. You don’t even see me pointing at you right now but you’re so into this music [emphasis mine] and I thank you for it.” Are you kidding me? How full of yourself do you have to be to stop a song so that you can point out how into your music a fan is? That’s not connection, that’s masturbation.

In addition, Jonah provides the audience with several pearls of wisdom and insight throughout the course of the show. He opines, “In rock, there’s a lot of bad reasons to do a lot of bad things.” Later he ads, “If anyone comes to you offering anything you don’t want, this is my response,” then sings, “I don’t wanna eat your shit!” Before “Hostage,” he proclaims that the song “got me through some scary, scary things. That’s what songs are for.” As the coup de grace he states, “when you’re putting someone down… it’s because you’re scared as shit.” It’s like visiting the self-help section at Barnes and Noble. But just when you think it’s gone as far as it could possibly go, somehow he actually manages to take the ridiculousness one step further. There is footage outside the concert venue after the show with fans sitting on the ground and Jonah standing in front of them. The fans are asking questions and he’s answering them as if he’s some sort of a guru. The questions include: “Do you do voices for different characters when you read a book out loud?” “Will you shake your booty for the camera?” “Can we have a group hug?” And my personal favorite: “Do you ever cry when you’re singing on stage?” I don’t think that requires a comment.

Now before you start to think that I’m just another Jonah hater who doesn’t “get” his genius, or I’m a man who doesn’t know how to emote and gets uneasy whenever I see someone else doing so, you should know that I own every Far album, the New End Original album, and two Onelinedrawing albums and I like them all. I appreciate Jonah’s indie-pop sensibilities, songwriting skills, and vocal delivery when he toes the cheesiness line. I like “Smile,” “Yr. Letter,” “14-41,” “Stay,” “Over It,” etc., and I think “Better Than This” is his best song outside of Far. But my god the false humility, massive ego, and ridiculous banter before, during, and after songs is enough to drive me insane and often sends me into fits of uncontrollable laughter.

Thankfully the house show is a bit more muted as far as the melodrama is concerned. The performances are somewhat rough (e.g.: “Yr. Letter” and “Better Than This”), but they’re still more compelling than what you are subjected to in the first hour of the DVD. I’m conflicted about the house show concept because I like the possibilities for intimacy that are involved, but it becomes a bit overwhelmingly egocentric in the hands of Mr. Matranga. Here he has no microphone, no amplified guitar, and not much to hide behind, so I have to give him credit for having the courage to perform in such a stripped setting. But the entire thing feels like an absurd (though, I suppose, predictable) extension of the whole indie rock / emo ethos. I find it quite telling that at one point during the performance he says, “All I’ve ever wanted to do is have a conversation,” and yet no one else talks for the entire performance. It’s just him.

The third section of the DVD includes videos for the entire Volunteers album. For the most part, the videos are composed of close up shots of Jonah’s face while he sings, dons emotional expressions, and desperately fights the urge to look directly into the camera. Unsurprisingly, this begins to feel repetitive rather quickly. The overacting of “A Ghost,” which finds Jonah covered in fake blood holding a child’s shoe and crying in the street, underscores how unnecessary most of these videos really are. Thankfully “Stay” strays from this pattern by incorporating footage shot by Jonah’s grandfather years ago. The impact of the video is aided by the fact that “Stay” is one of the better tracks from Volunteers, but on its own the editing of the old footage is still more compelling than all of the face shots. The track is built around a quintessentially emo guitar riff and beautiful sappiness that you could drown in. It’s a reminder that Jonah can still write an excellent song.

The “no set list, build the show around requests, buy the merch for whatever you can afford, let the chips fall where they may” approach to live performance carries with it an ethos that sounds compelling on paper, but in reality it usually ends up being overwhelmed by the ego and cult of personality that Jonah brings to the stage. The concert footage makes obvious what you try to suppress while you are actually seeing him live: Jonah’s performances are now like watching high school plays during which you are willing to suspend disbelief for a while, but when you reassess everything later the overdramatization and ridiculousness hits you like a bad hangover. Where’s the old Jonah who could say so much just through the songs and performances without having to resort to all of the faux spontaneity and desperate pleas for connection and the creation of a “transcendent experience?” It just feels so painfully forced and it hurts to watch it.

You would do well to avoid this CD/DVD and instead get your hands on the re-release of Water & Solutions, which includes a live performance DVD. Afterward, you can shake your head at how Jonah has fallen from his genuinely intense performances of those early years and somehow landed in the mess that is his current modus operandi. Though there may be a lot included in this CD/DVD release, not much of it is really worth listening to or watching.
www.jonahmatranga.com
www.equalvision.com

Listen to a song from this album in our Radio section!

Click here to buy this album on iTunes!

Click here to download the iTunes jukebox application for Macintosh or Windows!

Kyle Wagner

Your name:

Your email address (required):

Your URL (optional):

Your constructive criticism:


Type this code into the box below:

 Past Constructive Criticism

shemp house posted the following Constructive Criticism: This review is brilliant! Jonah Matranga was the worst single live act I have ever seen. As bad as the songs were, the between song banter was so much worse. Kyle Wagner, you can write your ass off. I salute you, sir.

Kyle Wagner posted the following Constructive Criticism: Jonah, I honestly appreciate your candid response to the review. I have no problems whatsoever with people disagreeing with what I write. In the bizarre world of music reviews, disagreements can be much more helpful for people who are seeking new music and experiences than a million individuals all saying the same thing and essentially providing free marketing rather than real opinions. I also admire the fact that you can respond from a place of understanding and rationality rather than posting a blindly emotional retort. If your intention is truly to create a dialog in rock music rather than apologetics and polemics spewed out by monolithic entities, I think that you have succeeded. But I also don’t suffer under the illusion that a dialogue between you and me will end up having much of a real effect on the way the music business works, as much as I wish that were true. With that said, I do stand by my review. For all its harshness I did work diligently to present an honest explanation of my issues with the DVD. Of course I make assumptions about you and those assumptions do color my opinion. Perhaps I’m simply too cynical to believe in true objectivity. But those assumptions are made after years of listening to your music and attending your shows, so I’m not entirely an outsider sitting in judgment. And of course I have considered that all of the “drama and talking and goofy aphorisms” are not just a put-on or symptoms of an over-inflated ego, but the point I tried to make in the review is that it simply doesn’t come across that way when I witness it all. I like to think that my criticisms don’t just come from me being too jaded to believe that your antics are genuine, or that I’m just too uptight to step beyond socially acceptable norms of behavior. Both of those are entirely plausible explanations for my reactions to your performances, but the reaction is still legitimate. As for the bizarre songs/performances/artistic expressions of other artists that I listed among my favorites, I agree that many of them have created and released countless absurd and ridiculous works that end up somehow making sense when put in the context of their entire catalogue. I idolize Dylan and I am perfectly willing to admit that a rather large portion of his output over the years has been painfully awful. But in a way pointing out the “bad” work can be rather easy. The difficulty lies in trying to understand and comment upon how, within all of the “mess”, as you put it, so much beauty can emerge. For example, I like to think that if I were writing reviews in the 60s and had a chance to review Don’t Look Back, I would have had the courage to state how much of an asshole Dylan is in the way he deals with Joan Baez or Donovan rather than simply discussing how amazing the music is. You have to review what is presented to you, in its entirety. Reviewing becomes a different game when you get a DVD because it’s no longer just about the music. You now have to consider images, personalities, and the motivations behind what was included and what was edited out. It requires you to be critical of the person (or people) in addition to the music because that is what is given to you. I have seen Tori Amos in concert as well. And while she can be quite over-the-top and theatrical, sometimes embarrassingly so, I’ve never felt her to be anything other than genuinely bizarre and exceedingly expressive without premeditation. With your performances, in all honesty, I’m not always convinced that they don’t stem from ego so it’s not quite the same thing, at least in my mind. I believe that if you spoke to me in person you would see that we share a lot of the same “foolish idealism” regarding what music can accomplish. I’ve had more than my fair share of completely transcendent experiences at concerts and I hope you can see in the review that I’m not knocking your desire to create something that takes people beyond just the music. In fact I would hope that such a desire is behind all honest art. My criticism is simply of the delivery, which I view as a valid criticism particularly when the delivery is presented center stage on a DVD. I don’t want you to think that I hate you or what you stand for and I’m glad it appears that you didn’t get that impression from the review. I’ve received a lot from your music over the years and I appreciate what you have given. I just had to provide my honest opinion of the DVD based on my own experiences and viewpoint. -Kyle

Jonah posted the following Constructive Criticism: Hi Kyle - I really appreciated that you took the time to really try and articulate yr problems with the DVD. While of course I think it's better overall than you give it credit for, and you could have given more time to the good stuff about it, I think you're spot-on pretty much, in that it is really melodramatic and silly and messy and absurd, and the high-school play thing is funny and accurate in a way. There's one big thing, though, which doesn't need to make it better or worse, but is important to know: All the drama and talking and goofy aphorisms and general chaos that you don't like, it's not a put-on, or a scheme, or about me thinking I'm great. I see how you could come to that conclusion if you make certain assumptions about me and where I'm coming from, and about rock in general, but there's another possibility, which is actually the truth of it: I'm just that idealistic about rock songs, performance as communal experience and the potential for, yes, transcendence. I'm always been so overt in saying that it IS about the audience getting into a show that can make it special, regardless of the artist. I just think it works best when everyone lets go of being cool and professional or whatever. I think that there have been times when those sentiments were a more accepted aspiration for a pop artist (early hXc, early Rock, 60s agit-folk, some Beat stuff, certain church stuff), and I think there have been waves and waves of 'indie' cynicism, and crass marketing, that have gotten things all muddy. I know well that I could reign myself in, be 'cooler', and probably not piss off a lot of people or embarrass myself, and perhaps I could make a lot more money doing it. I understand business, I understand trends. I think scenes and the passing rules that come with them can be awful for art, though good for business. I'm also aware that some of my favorite shows make me cringe when I watch them back, but I'm no less convinced that the moment really WAS great when when it was happening, regardless of how it looks through the lens (literally and figuratively) of reproduction. All that said, the Volunteers videos are my favorite part of the DVD, and that Chain Show in particular was a pretty over-the-top night, even for me, and that's part of the reason I put it there, in a way. It remains a really happy memory for me, even seeing it and laughing at myself. Also, I have a bias against safe, gussied-up live records and DVDs. I'll always lean towards the mess, for better or worse. Several of the artists on yr list of faves have done many awful, ridiculous things, but viewing their catalogue, the weird stuff somehow fits in and makes the whole thing more full. More than that, I trust that those artists did those things cos they felt like it at the time, which is all I would ever ask of anyone. No, I'm not pretending to be as good as Dylan, Neil Young, Miles, etc., but I have absolutely learned from them, and aspire to that sort of artistic output, i.e. a bit nuts and stupid sometimes, but ultimately solid and interesting and reaching. I don't even like most of Tori Amos' stuff (though some is fucking genius), but the live recordings I've heard of her make me cringe the way some of mine do, and I think it's interesting that she was on the list, and I wonder if you've been to her shows, and what you think of them. I considered editing a lot of the talking junk from both shows, and decided against in the end, but I may well do the editing next time, as I agree with you that it takes away from the songs on many occasions. I'm just in a place where I'm letting go of a lot of stuff, and wanting to be as open about my mess as possible. In general, I would imagine that I'll talk less in the future, save the odd freakout or two. We'll see. As I'm aware that you perceive me to be something of a megalomaniac (no offense taken), I'll try to clarify that I'm not pretending you care that much about all this, but I appreciate that you seem to have thought about what you wrote, so I figured you might be interested in weighing this as well. I just love dialogue, and think there's not enough of it in rock. I'm glad I read what you wrote, and hope to say hi in person sometime in Chicago or somewhere. Take care. Jonah ps - If you want to, please feel free to reprint this (unedited, please) if there's a context for it. Thx for reading it. pps - If you really do try to do mind-control with cats and think it might work and know it's weird but still say it, you've just illustrated the sort of odd, embarrassing admission that I was trying to get across with that DVD, and that I aspire to in general. Damn, one more thing: I was just as weird in Far at times, and was maligned for it then as well. That Chicago show was obviously much more straight, but yea. For better or worse, I've always been the same idealistic, naive freak.

Tim posted the following Constructive Criticism: Andrew: ironic how? Kyle's review is plenty constructive. It points out Jonah's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the man's obvious megalomanical attitude toward his fans. There was no "this guy sucks," vague put-downs: Kyle explained all of his complaints, not to mention listed SPECIFIC EXAMPLES in the DVD where Jonah obviously goes off into la la land. Useless is being a jerk-off fanboy kneejerk reacting to an unfavorable review of your hero instead of actually reading. Your parents are throwing away money putting you through college, apparently.

Andrew Yegler posted the following Constructive Criticism: Ironic that your feedback form asks for "constructive criticism". Practice what you preach? "Gonna talk shit? Don't expect your comment to stick around." -- If only people on the outside world had the ability to delete the useless shit you write on this site, we'd all be better off.