Personnel: Emilee Seymour, Tim Armstrong (vocals); Mike Green (guitar); Anton Patzner (violin); Lewis Patzner (cello); John Paulsen (organ, percussion); Ben Kramer (organ); Nick Foxer (keyboards); Paul MacD Ruxton (vibraphone); Miles Hurwitz (bowls); Dean Butterworth (percussion).

Audio Mixers: Jared Kvitka; Joe Mabbott; John Feldmann; Mike Green ; Matt Radosevich.

Recording information: Foxy Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Skyline Studios, Oakland; Talking House Productions, San Francisco, CA; The Hive, North Hollywood, CA; The Treefort, Los Angeles, CA; Tim's House, Los Angeles, CA.

Photographer: Sarah Schaaf.

Arranger: John Paulsen.

Originally a product of the Bay Area's celebrated punk scene with the usual local influences, the Matches have completed their evolution into purveyors of finely orchestrated power-pop on A BAND IN HOPE. The Matches still have the exuberance of young Oakland punks, but have channeled that energy and excitement into a wealth of ideas. "Darkness Rising" is a haunting and dramatic piano ballad with elegant vocal harmonies and hymn-worthy echo, and "To Build a Mountain" is modern day-glo tremolo psychedelic pop. A BAND IN HOPE touches on Elvis Costello and other tailored new-wave pub rockers without blatantly imitating anyone.

After a start playing fairly ordinary pop-punk on their debut and an encouraging sense of experimentation on its follow-up, Oakland quartet the Matches don't seem to know exactly what they're doing on their third album. On the one hand, many songs draw inspiration not only from old-fashioned slickly commercial AOR hard rock (the fist-pumping roots of "Their City" and "We Are One" lead back to Bon Jovi) but also from current mainstream Top 40 paradigms. No kidding: the bouncy singsong pop of first single "Wake the Sun" could, with only the barest minimum of alteration in production style and arrangement, potentially be a chart-topping single for someone like Natasha Bedingfield or Jordin Sparks. Elsewhere, anthemic opener "AM Tilts," "Point Me Toward the Morning," and "Future Tense" are by the numbers commercial alt-rock sure to appeal to the style's core demographic. But as if in direct opposition to the rest of the album's grab for the brass ring, big chunks of A Band in Hope are almost shockingly unexpected, verging at times on just plain weird. The ballad "Darkness Rising," with its arrangement of solo grand piano and ornate, overdubbed close harmonies exploding into a bizarre martial kick-step climax, sounds like bandleader Shawn Harris has been listening to quite a bit of Queen and/or Andrew Lloyd Webber. Either way, it's kinda freaky, as are the woozy alt-folk psychedelia and deliberately bizarre, hiccuppy vocal affectations of "To Build a Mountain" and the truncated, inconclusive minute-long closer, "Proctor Drive." In this context, the two-minute pop-punk throwaway "Yankee in a Chip Shop," a gleeful Oakland/London culture clash set to the album's simplest and punkiest tune, stands out, in the likely unintentional sense that it's the only song on the album where the Matches don't sound like they're trying way too hard. ~ Stewart Mason