Matthew Good’s days topping the charts in the ’90s with the Matthew Good Band may be over, but the musician is on his seventh solo album and is more creative than ever. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize the album title, Chaotic Neutral, as a character alignment in the game. Chaotic neutral makes characters unpredictable and individualistic, which Good says are also characteristics of the album.
“I played D&D for fucking 25 years. You have to know a bit about the game to understand it,” says Good. “The gamut the record runs, it definitely has elements that are schizophrenic, and the first thing that comes to my mind is that alignment.”
Schizophrenic indeed: Chaotic Neutral is all over the place, telling stories of lost sailors and children who have fallen down wells, as well as Good’s own struggles with being bipolar. Good’s vibrato voice and random sounds of animals and children playing in the background make the album sound like a morbid lullaby.
“Sometimes I’ll have an idea and I find a way to tell it,” he says about his creative process. “Something like ‘Cold Water,’ that’s a story of ill-fated love. It’s an early 19th-century English tale of a sailor and his wife used to get that point across. For something like “Girls in Black,” I wrote that first verse and just thought it sounded really cool. Sometimes it’s really poignant, and sometimes it’s really organic.”
Good’s ability to be creative has kept him a staple in Canadian music for 20 years. Good’s creativity stems from embracing his imperfections, and allowing them to help move his music forward.
“Every album captures a moment in time,” he says. “That’s a lesson you learn, for me, at least. I think you start thinking about records and not trying to capture so much perfection. In the creative process that’s important in regards to longevity, because it allows you to see the imperfection in something and then go from there.”
Good has long used music as a medium for activism, drawing attention to poverty in Vancouver, the war in Iraq, and climate change; Chaotic Neutral is no different. A theme of mental illness runs throughout the lyrics, in addition to the reference to schizophrenia in the title. Good says his music is both created from his disorder and used to help deal with the disorder.
“Now, after being diagnosed, and on proper medication, it’s half and half. I think music comes from a place, and it’s also used to cope with the place it comes from, whether you’re really enlightened about that location or not,” he says.
Good stresses the importance for writers to be themselves, which is sometimes the hardest thing to do.
“Don’t try to write like anybody else,” he says. “You need to find your own voice, and don’t be afraid for that voice to be an improper one. Find a way to do something that you’re passionate about, and it’s you, and that you’re not afraid that it’s you.”
Even though Good says writers should stay genuine to themselves, he also thinks we’re all still, as he put it in his song “Strange Days,” “lying for a living” to get by.
“Don’t we all, though? That’s just part of the human condition, isn’t it?” he says. “I don’t think any person would be able to get through the day if we weren’t doing a little bit of that.”
Matthew Good
Friday, November 6
$47.25, Alix Goolden Hall
vcm.bc.ca