OC Music Magazine

Chantel Donnan 

     One glance at the cover art for Matt Kollar and the Angry Mob’s EP, “She Changes Face,” and it's easy to see that the music in store is not what you might expect. Drawn by Allison Reimlod, the cover depicts a young girl in the forest, dressed in blue with a flower adorning her shiny locks, strumming on a banjo. Pleasant, mellow, and serene; that is, until you glance down the figure’s left arm at the sailor’s anchor tattoo and notice the black crow settled atop the banjo she’s playing. What a strange combination, I remarked as I slid the album into my CD player. What sort of tricks has this little girl got tucked up her cap sleeves?

              The answer is 6 delightful tracks that, as frontman/songwriter Matt Kollar says, “[are] an experiment in the different styles that the band has to offer the world.” The title track (“She Changes Face”;) is a bouncy piano-rock song, complete with a musical interlude battle between a piano, a trombone, and an accordion. “To The Night!” calls to mind the romance of 1940s cinema, with delicate melodies strolling arm-in-arm with a Paris café-style accordion, while the vocals of Matt Kollar and Elizabeth Messick proclaiming lyrics bound to make any girl swoon. “Carry The Light” continues this mellow tradition and exemplifies the beauty of simplicity, as Kollar, Messick, an acoustic guitar, and a glockenspiel churn out a lullaby-type melody perfect to send any man or beast peacefully off to dreamland.

              However, Matt Kollar and the Angry Mob are far from a group of one-trick ponies; though they may be excellent with the slower stuff, they’re harder tracks are just as enjoyable. Tracks like “409 Blues,” a jazz-infused break up track that shows the harder, growly capabilities of Kollar’s voice and the effortless power of Messick’s. With “A Driftin’ Blues,” they group brings back their trombone from track one, and adds on “distorted megaphone vocals” to roughen up the sounds. The final track, “Gotta Get Blue,” is a truly grand finale, bringing back all the instruments for what Kollar calls, “an experimental symphony of noise and opera.”

              Be it calming or toe-tapping, understated or in-your-face, the group proves, track by track, that they are excellent musicians and songwriters. If Matt Kollar and the Angry Mob truly wish to call their EP an experiment, then I will be here to say it is an experiment gone right! The EP will be released on Friday, March 5th, and the band will be putting on a performance at the Westminster Best Buy that same day. The EP is certainly worth picking up – trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

 

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