After the release of his debut as
Onelinedrawing, Jonah Matranga toured relentlessly with bombastic groups including
Thursday,
Coheed & Cambria, and
the Weakerthans -- and on
The Volunteers, it shows. No longer are the arrangements dominated by hush vocals and spare instrumentation.
The Volunteers is gifted with smashing anthems like "We Had a Deal" (which could be
Ryan Adams-penned). But Matranga doesn't completely abandon the original template, and the echoey and sparse bits create a now familiar but still effective loud/soft dynamic that is unstoppable. Even when the songwriting is odd (the start-stop "Over It"), it's because Matranga is masterfully constructing a setup to transition into pure pop grandiosity.
Onelinedrawing, in general, may be a bit too saccharine for some listeners, and it lacks the classic power pop levity of a
Brendan Benson or
Weakerthans, but
The Volunteers is a wildly inventive record that can stand tall beside earnest peers like
Saves the Day's
In Reverie. ~ Charles Spano