More Than You Think You Are

Performer: Matchbox Twenty
Producer: Matt Serletic
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Matchbox Twenty: Rob Thomas (vocals, piano); Paul Doucette (acoustic & electric guitar, piano, Clavinet, Mellotron, drums, percussion); Kyle Cook, Adam Gaynor (guitar, background vocals); Brain Yale (bass). Additional personnel includes: Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar); Carol Webb, Enrico Dicecco, Jonathan Minklage, Maura Giannini, Jan Mullen, Ricky Sortomme, Bonna Tecco (violin); Sue Pray, Sarah Adams, Crystal Garner, Vincent Lionti (viola); Eric Ralshe, Jerome Ashby (French horn); Paul Doucette (synthesizer); Matt Serletic (congas); Vanesse Thomas, Lydia Mann-Jaime, Melanie Daniels, Cheryl Pepsi Riley (background vocals). Recorded at Bearsville Studio, Woodstock, New York and The Hit Factory, New York, New York. MORE THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. "Unwell" was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal. In between his commitments to the band, Matchbox Twenty singer-songwriter Rob Thomas had spent the time leading up to the group's third album collaborating with everyone from Willie Nelson to Mick Jagger (his resuscitation of Carlos Santana's career already being old news by this point). Despite all these star turns, Thomas returned dutifully to the fold, and MORE THAN YOU THINK YOU ARE definitely sounds like a band effort, not just Rob-and-the-other-guys. While the catchy "Disease" (no pun intended) occasionally comes a little too close to Carly Simon's "You Belong to Me" for comfort, its musical insistence and inventive production make it stick in the memory. "Bright Lights," with it's piano-laden elegiac feel, is somewhat akin to the Train hit "Drops of Jupiter." "Downfall" starts out like a rowdy piece of alt-rock, but eventually drops into a surprising gospel feel, complete with choir. Like the opening track "Feel," "You're So Real" is a hard-charging rocker full of nasty riffs, but it's followed by album-closer (not counting a subsequent hidden track) "The Difference," a power-ballad that's the closest thing on the album to what longtime fans might have been expecting from their mercurial heroes.

Rolling Stone (12/12/02, p.96) - "...The quintet no longer comes across desperately commercial or deadly earnest..."

Anyone who couldn't relate to the agitated sounds of late-'90s/early-'00s alt-rock but still wanted to hear something new found solace in such "mature" alternative acts as Matchbox 20. Taking the anthemic rock and balladry of Pearl Jam and smoothing out the edges, the band (led by pretty boy Rob Thomas) hit paydirt right off the bat with their monster-selling debut album, 1996's YOURSELF OR SOMEONE LIKE YOU. Thomas's guest vocal on the Santana smash "Smooth" didn't hurt Matchbox 20's profile either.

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