Matt & Kim - Grand

This isn't the first CD I ever owned; that honor would go to Leave This Town by Daughtry. Nor would it be the first CD I ever bought for myself, but Grand by Matt and Kim was the first CD that I ever tried to buy. I walked into Scotti's records with my mother one day in 2010 looking for this, and came out with a copy of LP4 by Ratatat and a promise from the clerk that they'd call me back once they got another copy of Grand from their distributor. My childhood best friend had shown me the music video for "Daylight" on his dad's computer in fifth grade and it was the first music that I'd ever listened to that didn't belong to my parents or 106.7 Lite FM. I know most people in the scene have (or fabricate) origin stories about some video on Headbangers' Ball or a cool older brother who hipped them to underground music. I started with playful, childlike vodka commercial music made by Brooklyn's horniest hipster couple.

If you're cynical, Matt & Kim are a warehouse party gimmick. Grand is just pop-punk/easycore on a casio keyboard. Cheap. Danceable. Not meant to be taken seriously. Stream-of-consciousness rhymes like "Never let your mark' erase 'cause broken legs can be replaced" in "Lessons Learned" are just filler to get to the big shoutalong chorus of "stayed up all night/slept in all day". There are shoutouts to Brooklyn landmarks all over the record, and to the 2000s hipster lifestyle. The opening lines of the record are "we cut the legs off of our pants/threw our shoes into the oceans/laid back and wade through the daylight" for christ's sake: what's more 2000s than jorts? They sing about a lot of stupid stuff on this album and play a lot of stupid melodies. "Good" "Don't Slow Down" is a love letter to the scene. "I'll Take Us Home" is drenched thick in metaphors, but if you squint you might see something about being vulnerable with your friends and your partner. Most of the songs aren't that deep. Melodies and chord changes are universally simple and sweet to the point of being irritating.

We have to talk about the packaging. It's a three-panel digipak that opens up like a gift. The cover and interior art is a messy collage, black and white photos of buildings juxtaposed at odd angles, all rolled over with orange, grey, and cream paint. The CD has the band name and album title cut out of the art so you can see the silver disc underneath. The insert has handwritten lyrics on one side and dozens of digital candid photos on the other. It's scrappy and homespun, definitely made by the band themselves rather than by a team of graphic designers, but it radiates the love and In short, it's everything you could want from a 2000s Brooklyn DIY band.

The thing that keeps my interest in this album is that it's raw. Matt doesn't hit every note he aims for; on some songs, he barely hits a single one. Kim's drumming is unquantized and sloppy. The piano tones are clearly synthetic, but charming in their fakeness. The shorter tracks that show off Matt's origins in pop-punk and hardcore bands hold up the best of the bunch. "Cinders" is a short and sweet instrumental push-mosh song and "Spare Change" is a nice piece of stomp-clap rock candy. The chorus of "I Wanna" isn't just a chorus: it's a breakdown (a bit of a wimpy breakdown, but it's a breakdown!). Even the title track "Daylight", while polished with overdubbed string and horn synths, still has out-of-tune harmonies and a weirdly swung backbeat. It's unique. It's fun. It has very obvious flaws that it tries to make up for with pure heart. However, just because something is sincere doesn't mean that I like what it's doing all the time. I am unafraid to admit that it's nostalgia (and beautiful digipak design) that makes me enjoy this album moreso than the songs.

It's weird to think that this is the album is responsible for the worst of my bad life decisions.

Grand by Matt & Kim is a bad album, and I like it

p.s. the best version of the best Matt & Kim song isn't on streaming, but there's a really dope music video with the demo version of 5k that freaked the shit out of me as a child