The Matches

Record stores might shove The Matches in the “punk” section or they might stick them in “pop” or “alternative,” but it doesn’t matter, because they don’t fit anywhere.

    They fit everywhere.

    This eclectic indie band first burst out of Oakland in 1997, with a knack for picking up the nuances of any genre. They name Rancid and Green Day among their influences, but their music has hints of everything from the Foo Fighters to The Darkness and The Decemberists. They can channel pure punk rage, and songs like “Little Maggots” positively drip with loud, in-your-face vitriol; but they can express hope, too, in toe-tapping ska ditties like “Wake the Sun,” and, in softer moments, a quiet, lilting beauty: Their breakout hit “Salty Eyes” has an old-timey, steampunk sound that you’d use to serenade your flapper ladyfriend as you tour circa 1920s Coney Island. Sometimes it seems that every song springs from a different band.

    The group refused to be pigeonholed through its first two albums, E. Von Dahl Killed the Locals and Decomposer.

    “With three CDs now, it’s beginning to feel like we have a real body of work,” said frontman Shawn Harris. “Between our first and second CD, which were totally different from each other, people kept asking ‘Which band are you?’ The truth is, we’re both.”

    Unusual for an indie record, their latest offering, A Band in Hope, employed seven producers, including singers from Goldfinger, 311 and Rancid, giving it a hyper, schizophrenic sound. It’s an album, says Harris, all about the contradictory of the self, a theme that the genre-defying Matches know well, featuring songs that bounce from carefree ditties to deep nihilistic despair. Even the title is a pun, and can be read as either hopeful or despairing: “A Band in Hope” or “Abandon Hope.”

    “Someone the other day told me the other day that they were a happy person,” said frontman Shawn Harris, “I just don’t get that. I understand the emotion, of course, but how can you say that you’re just happy? For every happy, there’s got to be a sad. It almost seems unhealthier. In one of our songs — how gross is that, to quote yourself? — we say, ‘In building a mountain, you’ve got to dig a hole.’ That’s sort of how I feel.”

    The band’s come a long way since it began as an after-school experiment in an Oakland garage, when Harris would visit his friends’ garages to play pinball, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and to just jam.

    It was after graduation that they started playing actual shows. They stuck around home for a year after leaving high school, not wanting to disperse to colleges without first taking a shot at the music scene and waiting for drummer Matt Whalen, who was one grade lower, to join them. And it was during that time that they started.

    “There were already a number of bands called the Locals when we started,” said Harris, “But we picked it because the name amused us back when we were in high school. Because we were a local band, you see. Later, when we started getting some attention, the amusement started to wear off, but we liked that it was a band name where, when you heard it, you couldn’t immediately tell what sort of music the band played.”



    But when a Chicago indie rock band of the same name pressured them to drop the moniker, the group came up with something even more esoteric: The Matches.

    It was a name inspired by many things, not the least of which was guitarist Jon Devoto’s childhood penchant for pyromania, but Harris liked the name because it turned punk convention on its head. He’d heard that the band’s idols, Rancid and Green Day, looked up to the venerable original wave Brit punk godfathers, The Clash. And the opposite of “to clash” was “to match”

    When they were struggling newcomers on the block, they got attention by playing guerrilla street concerts for the crowds exiting the big venues. When they couldn’t get booked at the hallowed East Bay institution of Gilman Street — the punk venue that spawned acts like Green Day and William-Sleator — they just set up shop across town and soon found that they’d accidentally started the Bay’s underage punk movement. They began doing shows at Oakland’s iMusicast, where their friends came to see them, bringing the young crowd with them.

    “It spread to become an East Bay scene,” said Harris. “There were really no punk scenes then except Gilman, which isn’t really a scene for kids. The only kids you’ll see are the ones on the curb, getting kicked out for not having a two-foot Mohawk. It’s a great scene, but when you’re young you always feel like you’re intruding there and messing things up for the crowd.”

    It wasn’t long before word got around and turnout at iMusicast shows rivaled that at Gilman.

    Later, when they were playing the 2004 Vans Warped Tour, Harris was approached by one of his high school heroes, Rancid guitarist Lars Fredrickson.

    “You guys are the Matches?” he said. “I hear you’ve got a beef with my boys at the Gilman.”

    Harris explained: “No, no, we just put on a rival show and I guess they weren’t very happy about it.”

    Fredrickson was impressed by their tenacity. “That’s pretty punk,” he said. Before leaving, he gave Harris his number and promised that, if anyone ever gave the band any trouble, they could call him and he’d be ready to fight.



    “He’s a big guy, so if we have any trouble we know that we’ll be in good hands,” said Harris. “We don’t really have any enemies, though; I guess we’ll have to make some.”

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