Matt Costa
Unfamiliar Faces
Release Date: Jan 22, 2008
Genre(s): Indie, Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Record label: Brushfire
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Album Review: Unfamiliar Faces by Matt Costa
Fairly Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating B+
California balladeer (and Jack Johnson protégé) Matt Costa loads Unfamiliar Faces, his second full-length with folk, indie, and psych-rock tunes — some hits (”Mr. Pitiful”), some misses (”Lilacs”). With a plucky guitar, harmonica, piano, and sun-burnished vocals, Costa knows how to work gospel’s euphoric uplift into secular music, though he follows the blueprints of his idol (a ”Hurdy Gurdy Man”-era Donovan) a tad too closely.
Based on rating 3/5
A card-carrying member of the California surfer-rock club, where Jack Johnson is president and G. Love secretary, Matt Costa manages to snap out of the haze that’s overtaken his contemporaries. As opposed to Johnson’s contented acoustic strolls, Costa is willing to let down his guard and test unfamiliar ground, as he does on Vienna, a moody and sparse bossa-nova-like song that features just Costa, his electric guitar and a drum machine.
Based on rating 5.0/10
Artist: http://www.mattcosta.com Label: http://www.brushfirerecords.com Audio: http://www.myspace.com/mattcostamusic Review by Matt Liebowitz.
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