http://chartattack.com/damn/2005/09/0207.cfm

Matthew Barber Can't Stop The Love
Friday September 02, 2005 @ 04:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff


Matthew Barber & The Union Dues

When Matthew Barber stepped into a studio late last year to start work on his new record, Sweet Nothing, the musician had to find a way to accommodate his case of musical split-personality. There were his singer-songwriter roots and the independent bedroom record that got him signed, but also his more recent, rock-centric live show with backing band The MaUnion Dues.

"The way that the album developed was that I had this kind of core group of rock songs that I'd been playing with the band when we went on tour last fall," Barber explains. "I wanted to take the full live band arrangements of five or six of these songs, and I wanted to at least record them and we ended up using them. But then I had these other songs that were written after that, or just outside of the context of playing with that kind of live rock band line-up.

"I knew that I wanted it to represent lots of different sides, and I knew that I didn't want it to be a sissy acoustic guitar singer-songwriter album. But at the same time I didn't want to betray the fact that I am a solo artist, so I wanted an album that kind of straddled both sides — that had the more intimate, stripped-down elements, but also the full-on Matthew Barber And The Union Dues, two guitars, rock 'n' roll sound. I wanted to put it all on the record and hope that it would still come together as a cohesive thing."

The Union Dues, however, were slightly less cohesive and earlier this year, each of Barber's band mates landed other opportunities or left to focus on their own musical paths.

He wished them well and found three new collaborators, deciding the name would represent whoever happens to be playing with him at any given time.

"Basically it came down to people's schedules and logistics and it's just tough to keep a full-time committed band, because people have jobs and they have other commitments and they have other bands that they have to gig with to make a living," Barber says. "I always want to have a band. If I've tried to loosely model myself after, or aspire to have a career like some of my idols. People like [Bob] Dylan and Neil Young were always playing with bands, but it's not always the same one. I mean Dylan's had this rotating cast of characters playing with him over the last 20 years."

Barber fans can catch this new line-up when the band head out west this fall. Even with the fuller sound, his sensitive, indie-pop loyalists will be happy to hear that the Sweet Nothing lyric book is full of relationship highs and woes.

Despite his best efforts to avoid writing songs about love, Barber still finds the subject creeping into every line.

"I'm gonna keep trying, but it is really hard for me," he says. "I don't know. I mean I did have a number of songs that we didn't really record, that are about completely different things, but it just became apparent that the songs that were really coming from a real kind of passionate place and that were sort of rising to the top as my favourites ended up being these songs that were obviously about relationships or whatever.

"I mean it wasn't my plan, but that's what came out. I still continue to try not to write about that sort of stuff, but I don't know, it's always been the number one kind of muse for me I guess. And I don't think I'm really alone in that respect, in terms of pop songwriting, but as long as you can do it in an interesting and honest way, and in a way that sort of conveys a real emotion, then it's kind of a timeless theme."

Sweet Nothing hits stores September 27.