Reviews

Hear hear for truth in advertising!  Jonah of Far, onelinedrawing, New End Original, and most recently Gratitude, has indeed packed a lot in to this CD/DVD digipack. The DVD features Jonah with a band at the Chain Reaction, an intimate living room show with no PA,  just Jonah, and finally a video for every single song from the onelinedrawing album The Volunteers. The Volunteers is my least favorite onelinedrawing album, but the videos - all shot and edited by Darren Doane and crew - offer unique slants on the songs that are worth checking out. The two live shows are premium Jonah: lots of starts, stops, false starts, fake outs, and crowd interaction. Everything that comes preprogrammed and packaged as a generic rock show is thrown out.  The energy flowing between performer and crowd is electric, and the house show breaks down any barriers between the two.
 
Jonah Matranga has played hundreds of shows and met thousands of people, but he still remains one of the most human and accessible people in rock today. That his quirky, self-referential style of performance works in so many venues: big, intimate, recorded and processed, is testament to the appeal of the man himself.  Watch his neck straining, see his big roman nose and crinkling eyes under a shortly cropped mess of dark hair, and you see just a man, a talented man to be sure, but just a man, sharing his gift and his love with whoever wants to receive it.
 
Highlights on the album include every performance of Livin’ Small and Bitte Ein Kuss, a particularly heartfelt rendition of A-L-L-Y-S-O-N, the Volunteers video for Smile, and Better Than This as heard in the living room in Southern California. The downside is a live video is close to the real thing, but it can’t recreate the sense of community that is fostered at a onelinedrawing show. That and some of the Volunteers videos begin to wear thin, especially on the weaker songs.
 
There is enough good in these 44 tracks (12 on the CD, 32 plus commentary on the DVD) to compensate for the few spots that drag. Truth in advertising is one thing, but the sheer amount of content in this CD/DVD package threatens to overwhelm all but the most prepared. Thanks Jonah, for making such an entertaining avalanche.