ALEXIS LAWTON-SMITH — The Peak (Simon Fraser University) 

Matthew Good will be at O’Brians Event Centre Nov. 8.

Burnaby (CUP) — Meeting Matthew Good for the first time, few people would be surprised to find him withdrawn and somewhat sullen. After all, this is the man who sold shirts embossed with the message “I Heard Matt Good is a Real Asshole.”

Good’s music isn’t exactly bubble-gum pop either; he is well known for his introspective yet anguished lyrics.

It was a rainy afternoon in downtown Vancouver and Good fit in with the atmosphere. On that day, however, he was down for a reason.

“He’s sick,” Good’s publicist Paula Danylevich said as we walked into his hotel room. “But don’t worry, he’s not contagious.”

Remnants of room service littered the doorway. By the looks of it, Good enjoys mussels — there was a tower of shells piled high on a plate. He sat at a small table, wearing his signature glasses with his laptop open in front of him. Like the carnage of shells heaped outside the door, Matthew looked as though he had seen better days.

“I have borderline pneumonia and I am on a ton of medication. It’s not fun,” Good said as we shook hands, but he brightened up once we began talking about his new album Arrows of Desire.

Unlike Good’s condition, his new album has a lot more pep. Departing from the slower, ballad-filled albums like Hospital Music or Vancouver, Arrows of Desire gets back to what made Good famous in the first place: rock n’ roll.

“It’s a back to basics record. Coming off how heady Lights of Endangered Species was, it was something I wanted intrinsically to do,” he said. “When I sat down to write it, I wanted to get back to the roots of the matter.”

Arrows of Desire does exactly what Good intended. Fundamentally, the album is quite reminiscent of Matthew Good Band, which dissolved in 2002. Good’s solo work has careened away from good old-fashioned rock for quite some time and a return to his roots could have proved disastrous.

Reflecting an earlier sound can often come off as repetitive drivel or make the artist seem as if he is trying to recapture his glory days of yesteryear.

Arrows of Desire defies the odds, though. With punched-up, slightly distorted guitars, basic drumming and a powerful vocal performance, Arrows of Desire is an anthem of a piece that is familiar but not exactly so. Good has managed to do what others have failed at: a return to a classic sound without eliciting a completely cringe-worthy response.

Songs like “Via Dolorosa”, “Arrows of Desire” and “Hey, Heaven, Hell” — all with religious references — seem to dot the album, but Good shook his head, waving off any notion of spirituality in the album.

“I am secular humanist,” he said. As if to emphasize his rebellion from rigid guidelines, Good lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

“‘Via Dolorosa’ has the historical context of Christ,” he explained. “But it also has a literary sense of the passage into suffering. This song is more about the crisis of humanity. It’s about any kind of trial that you have to endure, or any trial that you cause others to endure. It’s [about] the madness that resides in those realities.”

Brimming with metaphor, Arrows of Desire is not your average sex, drugs and rock n’ roll album. But then again, Good isn’t exactly a normal rock star either. He currently lives on a ranch in Mission, BC with his wife and three children. Instead of tales of drunken shenanigans and pretty women, Good shares stories of family life.

Don’t expect Good’s simple, less-than-rock star lifestyle to stop him from making music, though.

“You don’t have the choice to stop when you are an artist. It’s not just something you can shut off,” he said. “As long as I can somehow make records, I will make records.”

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Photo: Supplied