Rating:   8 Ratings     12345  

onelinedrawing The Volunteers EP Jade Tree

      I'll start you off with the line that I think many reviewers will quote for a plethora of reasons that I can't go into now:

"Forget what's coming, forget what's went
Something stolen or something lent
A preacher or a president
That never lies and never sins
And tells us what a mess we're in
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow"

      On the new EP from his brain and limbchild Onelinedrawing, Matranga puts on display four tunes from his upcoming Jade Tree release, The Volunteers. These songs effectively do what an EP/sampler are supposed to: Make you wait impatiently for the album to come out so you can run out and buy it. With his well mixed offering of electro-acoustic songs, Onelinedrawing is able to show how valuable sometime alone can be. Recorded in the home on a laptop computer, Jonah plays all of the instruments himself and the mix sounds very far from being "raw." The singer/songwriter/instrumentalist makes superb platforms for his words to sit upon as each song on here has a punchiness in the music that conveys the exact feeling of the lyrical offering or message. On "We Had a Deal," an overflowing heart tells of dreams gone unexpectedly wrong by means of fate and failure on the part of both the narrator and rest of the living and supernatural world. Behind the vocal is a mix of distorted guitar and acoustic chords and fierce drums all leading to a lighter self-reflective delivery that leads the track to its fiery end.

Photo by Jessica Miller

      From here we move to "Superhero," a thoughtful message on the power of the L word, but not in a gushy, February 14th kind of way. Matranga spouts:

"When you make someone into a superhero
Know that they will fly
And they will see right through you
They will burn so bright
that They will make you blind.
If heaven will have you, someone will have you"

From the louder, faster track before it, we get a lighter, inflective, mood driven piece where the words are primarily on display. And again the maestro is able to perfectly match the emotion in the vocal with the tinkling of the picked notes and electro/digi sweeps that lay behind it. Part of what makes this EP so interesting is that there are essentially four different "feels" on here, so any guess at what this album will be like is pure hypothesis. Judging by the mixture odds would say that there will be a good deal of pleasant surprises.

      The tempo is upped a bit on the "scene" semi-denunciation track, "Over It." As much as I hate to compare one musician's sound with that of another, my first and second thoughts on this track are that it would be completely comfortable somewhere on Pinkerton. The song lets Matranga voice his opinions on a musical nonplus, "The Scene." With Onelinedrawing, the aim for Jonah is to get his ideas out and work them to the point of his own satisfaction, something thought would seem quite obvious to the outsider looking in. But in music, like other things, there are certain expectations that arise when people start to notice what it is you're doing. Matranga prefers the simplicity of it all. After all, "Music really is, in the end, just ideas" as he says. On the track, he adds:

"Show me how to smile
Remind me how to mean it"

With "Over It" we get a great and telling tune about just being a person like everyone else and Onelinedrawing gets a little help from bi-coastal friends on the closing chorus which is yet another testament to the home studio exploration that led to some "live in the field" accompaniment as it were. The best part about recording on a laptop? It goes where you go. The voices heard are a combination of Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey fans mixed with Matranga's family members gathered in the bedroom of his grandfather.

Stuff that in your megastudio and smoke it down.

      The lyrics to "A Ghost" are definitely required reading upon picking up this album. From the first word to the last you get a great look at some of Jonah's personal thoughts and realizations on life. Not only is he willing to talk openly about the smaller obstacles, but he is firing on all cylinders when it comes to the more meaningful facets of our time on the ground. Set against a cool programmed drum pattern, effects touch down, go away, and return in different form throughout the song. The song flows and builds around a rising vocal that works beautifully and takes this disc out on a very strong note. I would sample some lyrics here, but I think I'll leave a little more mystery for hopeful listeners. Who am I to give everything away before the record comes out?

      "A Ghost," while ending the EP is the third song on The Volunteers, so there must be an incredible amount of weight in there that will end the disc in a fashion that is equal or far beyond the power of this song. For Onelinedrawing, there is enough on this sample piece to make listeners hungry for a full length and it is only right around the corner. Mr. Matranga has rallied his inner-troops for this one man band album and that is just one of the things that make it so good. He gets so much across in each song that you have to wonder why we let people get away with non-substance lyrics and quick hits. The benchmark of "good" in whatever category you feel the need to throw him? Onelinedrawing.

-Joel Armato 03/11/04