When we first heard from him in 2005 after nearly ten years without a proper album, Eric Matthews didn't sound much different from the guy we heard in the 1990s. It was as if that decade hadn't even happened. But on this, the second full-length of his return, the feeling of déjà vu is mostly gone. Whereas I got the sense his last album and the couple of EPs that orbited it were a clearing of house from all that time off, The Imagination Stage seems to be the record that tells me what he sounds like now, a genuine move into new territory.
The building blocks for Matthews' brand of indie pop-- careful, ornate arrangements, steady medium tempos, breathy vocals, restraint-- are still in place, but this album slows down that sound and stretches it over an atmospheric hour. The result ranges from pretty to dull, and the album suffers from the same basic problem as 2006's Foundation Sounds: it's way too long. Of the album's 56 minutes, far too many consist of little more than keeping time, and on the few songs that feature drums, they never do anything more interesting than an entry-level rock beat.
As usual, Matthews uses his vocals as another instrument in the texture, but this time around the approach denies the songs a gravitational center more than usual. Certain tracks get by mostly on feel. "That Kiss of Life", for instance, doesn't have a strong melody and the Bacharach-ish horns repeat a simple phrase that doesn't quite amount to a hook, but it all coalesces to create a plush, echoing aural pillow that at least sounds nice. On the title track, he sings, "I tried like hell to make the music beautiful," and he mostly succeeds at that, but beautiful and memorable aren't necessarily the same thing.
That's illustrated amply on "Don't Take Light", which wanders through an ambient haze of piano, vocals and strings, and sounds pretty but never hooks you with anything more than its prettiness. It is one of the few songs, though, to feature real dissonance, which sets it apart some. Most of the rest of the record is heavily diatonic and unsyncopated, leading it all to blur together. The church organ of "Her Life" provides another spike of darkness, but again, it's mostly just atmosphere as the vocal never latches on to a real melody.
This is an album that, despite possessing many of the signifiers of pop and surrounding them with pretty chamber orchestra arrangements, doesn't stick with you. It's the age-old wallpaper effect: it sounds good, and it's hard to pick out any one thing that's terribly wrong with it, but it's also hard to find a reason to listen again. Even after several listens, I felt like I was hearing each song for the first time, not because there was a lot to listen to, but because none of it had stayed with me. It's good to hear Matthews challenging himself and exploring a different sound, and his most ardent fans will want to hear where he's gone, but in his comeback he's yet to equal his first two solo albums from so long ago.
