Quick quiz: How many people can name a member of the band Matchbox 20 other than its lead singer?

(Cue the "Jeopardy!" theme and the voice of Ben Stein droning "Anyone... Anyone... Bueller...")

Yeah, so not very many of you. I can't blame you; I didn't know any of those other guys from Adam until their third album came out few years ago and I was forced to pay attention to something other than the vocals and song lyrics. That's not to say that they were a bad band, but I have to admit that for a band so hell-bent on making radio hits, they sure hit with a big wallop on 2002's More than You Think You Are. I loved that record and found it to be highly consistent and have a lot of replay value. And it wasn't just for Rob Thomas's messed-up musings on his gone-to-hell-in-a-handbasket relationships, though that's always been an interesting element. On that record, more so than their first two, they really sounded like a band. I loved that.

So why is now the right time for Rob Thomas to release a solo record? OK, so he's the face of the band that everyone gets to see, and he's their primary songwriter, and like it or not, he's become a bit of a sympathetic sex symbol. But does it make sense at this point for him to strike out on his own? I don't know; your casual MB20 fans probably wouldn't even notice. He's got a distinctive enough voice and he's always been a radio-friendly guy, so do that many people care if he's backed by a real band, or programming, or studio players? Probably not. But normally, when an artist goes solo, it's done with the intent of breaking out of the mold they've gotten into with their band, exercising some creative freedom, and showing a devoted audience a different side of their personality. I just don't feel like Something to Be does that in a way that's a whole hell of a lot different from the prototypical MB20 stuff.

Think back a few years to MB20's second album, Mad Season. While I felt that it was also a solid album, it was kind of overrun with all manner of production tricks and guest instruments, etc. At times, it bordered on being a Rob Thomas solo album, in much the same way that Everyday could have been a step towards a Dave Matthews solo album. Less band, more ruminations from the lead singer. Take something like that, make it a little less cohesive and shave a little bit of the insight from the lyrics, and you'll basically get the Rob Thomas of 2005 - a guy who seems to want to establish a different image as he toys with urban pop and funk and exotic foreign instrumentation and even the cliched solo piano ballad. In the end, I can see the strains of a different Rob Thomas persona, but he plays it way too close to what we already now. He's still the heartbroken songwriter who has a hot wife in real life. He still makes interesting observations about messed-up people becoming their own self-fulfilling prophecies, but the edges are kind of dulled this time around.

The bottom line is that if this album didn't have a few musical experiments that truly stood out, and if the stuff that stuck closer to MB20 territory wasn't at least still an acceptable alternative to what we could be getting from the full band, I wouldn't be able to recommend this album. I get enough out of Something to Be that I find it to be worthwhile, but for the most part it's mainly an appetizer to tide fans over until the band gets back together (and whether they're on hiatus or Rob has made a permanent split with the band, I honestly don't know).

This Is How a Heart Breaks
You're not the best thing that I knew
Never was, never cared too much
For all this hanging around...
The steady sound of drums gets the album moving - you can hear faint guitar strokes and a piano as Rob's first verse gets going, but for the most part, this is a very beat-driven song. If you took the prototypical Matchbox 20 breakup song and replaced the rest of the band with electronics, you'd probably get this awkwardly buzzing piece of product that tries to sell itself as a rock song. The odd thing is that it sort of works, if you can get over the little robotic blips that take the place of guitars. The piano and some female vocals (think back to "Downfall", but not quite as novel this time around) add a little bit of life, and as always, I end up falling for Rob's habit of spitting out a few syllables rapidly at a time, but it does get to the point after a while where if you've heard one Rob Thomas lyric where he revels in his messed-up-ness, you've heard 'em all. So along this one goes, pointing out the obvious until its last vocal line gets digitally sliced off.

Lonely No More
Now It's hard for me when my heart's still on the mend
Open up to me, like you do your girlfriends...
This song had a lot of things working against it when I first gave it a listen. First of all, there was no way that I was convinced Rob was going to try on urban clothing (requisite "dog panting" sounds and all) and make it work. Second, even if it did work, this was basically a song about wanting to be with someone because it beat being alone, even if that person was a completely awful match - or at least that's how I read it. And third, my first exposure to the song came during a commercial for Desperate Housewives. Ick. Attempting to look past all that, I suppose Rob hasn't done too bad of a job - even some past MB20 songs have had an urban-inflected delivery to them in terms of the rhythm and the lyrics being syncopated (see "Crutch"). And maybe what Rob is doing is more of a caricature, a sarcastic play on a genre he knows doesn't work for him. After all, it's kind of hard to take the weird little singing cartoon voice at the beginning seriously. Again, there's not much here that Rob hasn't said on every Matchbox album, but it does end up to be a fairly catchy groove, a song I don't mind hearing on the radio from time to time. I don't think it quite deserves hit status, but it's passable.

Ever the Same
We were drawn from the weeds
We were brave like soldiers
Falling down under the pale moonlight...
A rather straightforward, medium-paced tune is up next - the piano provides a bit of a rhythmic anchor, but the song strikes me as otherwise unremarkable. It's basically a song about wanting to be dependable - Rob tells a woman who is falling apart, "Fall on me, tell me everything you want me to be". It's touching when he says "You're no burden, I assure", and I guess this sort of a lyric is uncharacteristically positive, which marks the first real step away from Matchbox's usual subject matter. But there's just too many "ever"s and "forever"s and simple rhymes like "me" and "be" for me to feel like this song makes much of an impact. It's too unassuming.

I Am an Illusion
I am the damage, I am the relief
Sometimes I'm people I never hoped that I would be...
The first real winner on the album shows up here, starting off in a rather unusual fashion with some light, clangy percussion and what sounds like slaves or field workers singing in the background. Then a decidedly electronic beat kicks in, and despite everything being so synthesized, I find the darker atmosphere to be intriguing. It puts Rob in a bit of a haze, and the song can seem almost monotonous and suffocating at first since it keeps jumping back to the same old chord and staying there. It's kind of like one of the lesser-known tunes on U2's Achtung Baby or Zooropa (the percussion especially reminds me of those albums), minus the strong guitar presence (there is a brief solo, but it's kind of subdued). Rob is having an identity crisis here, admitting that he's allowed himself to be what other people tell him he should be, and as a result he's kind of lost track of who he really is. The song works well as a lament, and which none of the music strikes me as even remotely blues-influenced, the chord progression definitely reminds of a blues tune, the way it sticks on one chord, and then for the last four bars out of twelve, it changes up and then returns. Add some blurting horns and a little vocal angst, and you've got the first of a few experiments that actually work out in Rob's favor.

When the Heartache Ends
And I move all directions, to the corners and the outskirts
While the lovers and the lonely start to whisper all about me
And if I stand here silent, I almost start to feel you fading in...
It's a shame that one of the album's best songs is surrounded by two tracks that I'm usually tempted to skip. This one hardly even lasts long enough to register, shuffling along on its unimaginative acoustic guitar strum. We've already heard about hearts breaking, and now we get to hear about them aching, and somehow that just makes me want to tune out for the three minutes that this song occupies. I mean, how many times before have I heard a song that says, "Hold on, 'cause it's gonna be alright?" The bridge is slightly more interesting, but it doesn't last long enough to change my mind about this song being a waste of space.

Something to Be
Dress down, now I look a little too boy next door
Maybe I should try to find a downtown wh*re
That'll make me look hardcore
I need you to tell me what to stand for...
Rob gives the digitized funk thing another go with the album's title track, which turns out to be one of its more curious pieces, with the swirling percussion that congeals into a sassy synthesized guitar lick, and lyrics that give us an interesting glimpse into something other than a breakup that proves to be a source of angst for Rob. It's almost a meta-Matchbox 20 tune, which Rob singing about the celebrity he's attained and the expectations people have of him, and how he's tempted to trash that image and be controversial in order to prove he's not predictable. It's all veiled, in a way, so it doesn't come off as blatantly as some of those "Pity me, I'm a celebrity" songs by other artists do, but it's telling when he angrily muses, "Hey man, play another one of them heartbreak songs/Tell another story how things go wrong, and they never get back/My pain is a platinum stack/Take that sh*t back!" It's a catch-22 - he's made a fortune by singing about messed-up relationships (and not that there's anything wrong with that, I've gotten a good deal of empathy out of his songs at darker times in my life), but now the problem is that he can't be anything but that without seeming out of character. The song might be guilty of doing too many things at once and trying to be a little harsher vocabulary-wise than Rob's usual stuff, but it works well as the album's centerpiece.

All that I Am
I am the white dove for a soldier
Ever marching as to war
I would give my life to save you
I stand guarding at your door...
Now here's one I'd never have seen coming a million miles away. The soft chiming of bell-like keyboards has me expecting a Sufjan Stevens song at the outset, which of course would be way out of place, but instead of that, Rob throws me a different kind of curveball by installing an Asian motif into what might otherwise be a pretty ordinary ballad. The exotic flavor works well for the song - it's like walking through a Japanese garden and viewing pictures that tell tragic tales of soldiers who failed to rescue their damsels in distress. That's basically what Rob is singing about here - he wants to dedicate himself to a woman, to give her his everything, but at the same time he realizes his own ability to save her from... well, whatever she needs saving from. That's not exactly clear. But I like a lot of his analogies, as pessimistic as they may be. The militant drums add a sense of poignant urgency to it all - this is definitely one that has a lot of replay value, but at the same time, it's one of those tricks that Rob can really only use once.

Problem Girl
You worry all the things they could do to you
You worry about the things they could say
Maybe you're seeing things the wrong way...
I don't care much for the glossy treatment that this song gets - its bright acoustic intro and bubbling synths sound like something I'd expect from a cheesy CCM rock act, not a mainstream rock singer usually known for less optimistic subject matter. Rob's in encouraging mode again, so I guess the music kind of makes sense, and it slowly breaks into a gallop as the song unfolds, which is nice because the drums don't go for the jugular right away and that gives the song less of an "obvious-single" feel. But I just can't shake the notion that Rob, in his effort to describe a girl who is being jeered by the people around her and to remind her "You're no problem at all", is trying a bit too hard to be clever by using "problem" as both a noun ("The kids on the street say, what's your problem, girl?") and an adjective ("When they all make you feel like you're a problem girl"). It just comes out awkwardly, and that sort of kills the impact that the song is supposed to have.

Fallin' to Pieces
Take my hand, fall in place
Soul inside, it shows in every line
That's on your face...
When I listen to this song, with its jaunty beat, looping guitar lick, and strokes of fiddle giving it a bit of a swampy feel, I can't help but think that this is what Rob would sound like singing lead for the Dave Matthews Band. Of course, a classic Dave Matthews Band tune would be much more musically accomplished than this, and it wouldn't use crappy programming. So I guess I'll refine that and say that it sounds like Rob singing lead on the Dave Matthews Band's new album. Alright, I joke around, but seriously, this is a pretty good song. Lyrically, Rob's gone back to the well of "Everything's about to go to crap, so could you stick around so I won't have to deal with it alone?", but darned if he hasn't totally hooked me with the drawn-out pleas during the verses, the little bits of fiddle and slide guitar that slink around, and the defiantly easy-going atmosphere that stands in opposition to the depressing lyrics. Alright, Rob. You win.

My, My, My
The light from the window is fading
You turn on the night
The sound from the avenue's calling you
Open your eyes...
You know, it always drives me nuts when people say "My, my, my". Your, your, your WHAT??!?! So naturally I'm going to be annoyed with Rob for building an entire song around a phrase that essentially works as a space-filler - and a rather slow and dull song at that. OK, so he's changed it up by using a 3/4 rhythm, some dreamy synth sounds and this weird guitar or synth line that echoes after the chorus, seemingly mimicking the verse melody. The tune, sluggish as it is, sticks in the head. I just feel like the lyrics are on auto-pilot - it's another song about a lonely girl, and we're not given enough info to know what Rob is my-my-my-ing about or how he wants her to deal with it. Yawn. Skip.

Streetcorner Symphony
Some people, it's a pity
They go all their lives and never know
How to love or to let love go...
One last dose of energy shows up in the form of another slightly funky song - against all odds, Rob's actually won me over with this style, even if those are probably cheap Casio keyboards masquerading as horns or something. This is one of those songs that makes you want to grab your buddies and maybe a few strangers and saunter down to the local pub at 1 in the morning. It's basically a call for unity that plays the "Sisters and brothers of every different color" card for no apparent reason other than because it sounds nice when you're singing it to a catchy beat. I've complained about Rob being too pessimistic in some of his songs, so I guess I can't fault him for writing a genuinely happy one that doesn't seem to be doing it for ironic effect. It's just a feel-good time, with a neat chord change-up in the bridge, and it comes off believably.

Now Comes the Night
When the fog has finally lifted
From my cold and tired brow
No, I will not leave you crying
And I will not let you down...
After all of the stylistic jumping back and forth, Rob decides to close the record with a piano ballad. This isn't a terrible idea in principle - it worked well when Mad Season closed out with the haunting "You Won't Be Mine". And of course, "Bright Lights", which moves from bleak piano ballad to full-on rocker over the course of four hit-making minutes is a personal favorite of mine. But Rob unfortunately chose a rather dull and repetitive melody to tell someone, yet again, they that don't have to be alone. As a result, there's not much to color this tune, and it totally fails to stand out to me in any way. It's not terrible, but not something I feel compelled to stick around for past the high of "Streetcorner Symphony", either.

Rob had a lot of good ideas on this album, but I get the feeling that either he didn't know how to put it all together, or he was being pulled every which way by the powers that be, who wanted to market an image much more than they cared to support a songwriter. As a result, Rob's been uncomfortably thrown out there with his weakest set of lyrics yet and a fair amount of half-baked songs. It's a listenable album, to be sure, but I'm just not feeling it begging me to keep playing it years later like I've been doing with More than You Think You Are. If you're an existing fan, or even a casual fan of MB20, I guess you'll have to think about why you liked them before you spend your money on this one. If it's because they're a tight and solid band, you'll probably want to skip this one. If it's because Rob Thomas is HOTTTT!!! or because you sympathize with the guy, you'll find enough to love to make this worthwhile. Me, I'm in between those two camps (disregarding the HOTTTT!!! part, obviously), and so I'm going with an average grade on this one.

ALBUM WORTH:
This Is How a Heart Breaks $1
Lonely No More $1
Ever the Same $.50
I Am an Illusion $1.50
When the Heartache Ends $0
Something to Be $1
All that I Am $1.50
Problem Girl $.50
Fallin' to Pieces $1.50
My, My, My $.50
Streetcorner Symphony $1.50
Now Comes the Night $0
TOTAL: $10.50

Website: http://www.robthomasmusic.com

Recommended: Yes

Great Music to Play While: At Work