Gothic Theatre
Matson Jones
Bands with two female cello players, an upright bass player and no guitars don’t play rock and roll. They tackle classical quartet versions of Bach and Brahms, or Lilith Fair-type artists with a vast repertoire of sad ballads. Certainly they’re not a well-dressed, extremely stylish, art-rock combo from Fort Collins.
Enter Matson Jones.
Despite their lack of traditional rock and roll instruments (except for the drums), Matson Jones is an indie rock band that seems poised on the brink of success.
During a recent interview between The Marquee and three members of the band (the fourth was out of town), a question about their musical style was met with giggles all around. When pressed, the band said they’ve been tossing around the label of “orchestra art pop,” but also said they realize that even this classification leaves something to be desired.
The songs on their self-titled album, Matson Jones, produce a slightly hypnotic effect on the listener, with the deep throbbing of the bass and cellos blending with the sweet and somewhat distorted vocals of the two female singers. The songs usually go from quiet to loud and back, a classic indie rock formula that never fails, if it’s done the right way.
Matson Jones are already masters of doing it the right way, and their unusual instruments and phrasing emphasize the poignancy of the lyrics.
The band’s unusual name comes from the pseudonym that the painters Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg used when they created shop window displays for department stores in the 1950s and ’60s, a fact that most people, unless they are art majors, will not pick up on. Although the current lineup came together just under a year ago, cellists Anna Mascorella and Martina Grbac met almost four years ago and quickly began playing together.
That incarnation of the band came to an end when Mascorella went off to Italy for six months. While she was gone, Grbac met a drummer named Ross Harada and he introduced her to his co-worker Matt Regan, an upright bass player. They began playing together off and on and Grbac and Harada even released a demo. When Mascorella returned, she was introduced to the boys and immediately liked the idea of adding a rhythm section, an idea she and Grbac had been toying with for some time. The complete lineup began playing together around July of 2003.
While the band has already been attracting lots of attention from local fans and promoters, they say that they’re taking a more laid-back, do-it-yourself approach to promoting and touring. Although they’ve already played some Front Range staples, they’re looking forward to bigger Colorado gigs and hope to coordinate a small tour out to Kansas at the end of summer.
The band is also considering putting together an EP of new songs, tentatively to be titled Casio Songs, after a small white Casio keyboard that Harada found at a bargain store for $1.99. The EP is set to contain seven songs, consisting of mostly strings and Casio with a few drums and “cameos from other instruments.”
