If his name sounds familiar to you it’s probably through Matt Nathanson’s association with Sugarland both as an opening act for the superstar band and for the Platinum-selling single “Come On Get Higher,” a song Sugarland recorded live for their Love On The Inside Deluxe Edition album. Modern Love isn’t a country album but it’s well-made modern pop rock music and it’s always fun to share some great music like Modern Love and Marc Broussard and Amos Lee and other people that are at least somewhat associated with country music. Oh, and Sugarland guests on “Run,” a song billed as (Featuring Kristian Bush and Jennifer Nettles).
With that in mind, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of Modern Love, hit single “Faster” kicks off the record and finds Matt singing about the euphoria of a great new relationship. The title track, “Modern Love,” on the other hand, finds Nathanson singing about a woman tired from being lead on from time to time. “Love Comes Tumbling Down” discusses the life-cycle of a relationship, from the euphoria of the beginning to the apathy of the end. “Room At The End Of The World” is the kind of song that is about the human heart needing another heart to go through life together, saying that “one heart is never enough alone.”
Each song on Modern Love does indeed tell stories about various stages of love, like the songs chronicled above and “Kiss Quick” about a brief encounter and “Mercy (Less Drowning, More Land).” It’s one of the ‘tempo’ tracks on this decidedly mid-tempo album with bluesy, R&B-ish vibe that’s not too far out of the realm of a band like Maroon 5 (another band that often sings about the matters of the heart). As mentioned above, “Run” features the members of Sugarland and is entirely something that could’ve been found on The Incredible Machine and it’s the kind of song that discusses how love and relationships can sometimes be ‘wrong’ yet feel ‘right.’ This tune, like many of the songs on Modern Love, feels like a massive adult rock and possibly even pop chart hit waiting to happen.
While Matt Nathanson’s music won’t appeal to traditionalists or those who ‘like two kinds of music, country and western’, I have a feeling that there are many other people out there that love all kinds of music and in fact are happy that genres are blurring the lines a lot more and proving there really are only two kinds of music to worry about: Good and Bad. And Matt Nathanson’s Modern Love is damn good music.
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