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Matt Brouwer
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Unlearning
Black Shoe Records
Release: 5/02/2006
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Rated:
Review by:
Gisele Grignon
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No gimmicks, no tricks, no surprise mystery guest vocals. Matt
Brouwer's debut is clean, confident without being cocky, and
joyfully unhindered by the tech garble by many newcomers
determined to make a big splash in an increasingly shallow
pool.
Unlearning is just Matt and his guitar, up close and
personal. How close and personal? You can almost feel the body
heat emanating from his (allow me my fantasies, please) his
torn, worn and all-guy jeans. But not embarrassingly so.
Case in point: 'A Simple Plan" (not to be confused with his fellow
Canadians of the band with that name) does what every opening
track should: set the tone for the balance of the CD and provides
newbie listeners with an iron-clad reason to stick with the entire
album, and as well as laying the foundation for a long-term,
rewarding relationship. When he belts out a moving "I can't live
here anymore," your gut reaction (okay, MY gut reaction) is to
hose off the Welcome Mat and personalize it by adding a T at the
end. Brouwer is the type of star-in-the-making that at once
triggers the kind of stomach butterflies you get when you're on
the precipice of discovering what you intuitively know will be a
memorable secret, and that quiet calm of meeting up with an old
friend after an especially stressful day.
There's a bit of John Meyer's lyrical, vocal and instrumental
likeability here, but Brouwer cranks it up on the sincerity and
soulful meters. There's also a smidge of James Blunt here, minus
the fey falsetto and at times grating accent (unless you count
Canadians as having accents, in which case, call off the musical
Mounties: Unlearning contains no criminal
utterances of the Canuck's cliched eh! Or abooot).
The other Canadian flavor here is in the form of awards.
Brouwer's earned a pair of Vibe awards (northern equivalent of
People's Choice Award), plus a nomination for a Juno (like an
Emmy, with tuned down hype). His current single "Surrender"
which, like most of the cuts on Unlearning, were
penned by Brouwer, earned the 12th spot on the Indie Top 40
charts and is justifiably still rising.
If there's a lesson to be learned from Unlearning it
may well be this: Music isn't Canadian, or American, Croatian or
Armenian: music, in general, and Matt Brouwer's brand in
particular, is truly borderless. This new artist has most definitely
done his homework and now deserves to move to the front of
the class and collect his shiny gold star. Class dismissed.
P.S. to Matt: Positively no doubt Antonie (Tom) is smiling down
upon his mightily talented son. |
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