Rating: 1.4 / 10.0
It kills me to write this. I honestly liked 2005's "Several Arrows Later". Sure, it was nothing groundbreaking, but I don't think enough people appreciated Pond's ability to craft a solid rock song. That record had some really great tunes on it. It's a record that I enjoy no matter what mood I'm in. It's a flexible listen, as many straight-ahead, dad-rock indie albums are. I never understood why Matt Pond got so much grief, especially when Wilco's boring-as-hell "Sky Blue Sky" got generally pretty solid reviews.
So okay; this review was supposed to be my polemic against the hypocrisy of critics, my scathing indictment of everyone who lets the fact that they loved "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" read genius into "Sky Blue Sky", of all those people who let their opinion of "Turn On the Bright Lights" colour their opinion of "Our Love To Admire". That's what this was supposed to be. But in order for it to be that, "Last Light" would have to be as good - or as unoffensive - as all of Matt Pond's other stuff. But looks like old Matt wanted to make my life a little more difficult.
The opening and title track was really good - exceptional even (enough to keep this record's score above 1). It got my hopes up. It sounded like Matt Pond had got a little grittier, a little less content with being the old vanilla milkshake of indie rock. But this song proves to be prophetic: "In the end, there will be only endlessness." A neat summary of what comes after this promising opener - a record that never seems to end (and never seems to get better either). Yes, from that first track, it is downhill. Pond throws in shiny production, guest appearances, and his characteristically distinctive-for-the-sake-of-being-distinctive-not-because-it-helps-the-songs arrangements, but at the end of the day, none of that stuff can save the songs from falling flat. Here, the simple, cloying quality of Pond's previous work is absent, and all we have is a shade under an hour's worth of evidence that he's run out of ideas. "Wild Girl", "Honestly", and "Foreign Bedrooms" are all especially low low points on a record that has no shortage of them.
To his credit, you can hardly blame him for having runneth dry his creating well. Since 2000, he's put out more albums and EPs than most bands put out in a career, and he's done it basically alone. He is Benjamin Gibbard without Chris Walla - a unidimensional songwriter who does not have the skilled producer behind him who makes it sound like he's growing.
There's not much I can say about "Last Light". I'm hugely disappointed by this record, and that's made worse by the fact that I know I shouldn't be. It was wrong to expect as much as I did from this record, and I - and sadly, Matt - am paying the price for it here. For now, I'll just put my headphones in, turn on "Emblems", return to days when Matt Pond had potential, and try and forget about this album.
-PTC
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