TORONTO – Matthew Good was once an early adopter and eager sharer on social media, but somewhere along the way his feelings soured.
In May, he tweeted that social media was a great thing, but also “a stalker, a bully, a racist, a thug.” On his new album “Chaotic Neutral,” the stormy song “Army of Lions” touches on the danger of true public candour and the way information can be misconstrued.
While he once publicly shared details of dealing with bipolar disorder, his Twitter and Facebook posts have since become decidedly less personal.
“There’s a certain uncomfortable familiarity that people start to talk to you with,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “It’s not the kind of familiarity that someone who knows you talks to you with. It’s kind of like they think they know you.
“After a while, that gets very disconcerting and entirely uncomfortable.”
A few moments later, the Vancouver native adds with a laugh: “Personally, I think the whole thing is a bloody distraction.”
Well, Good has indeed been focused lately.
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He completed the new “Chaotic Neutral” – out Sept. 25 – after trashing an entire album’s worth of material, which was composed of “better ideas than songs,” he said.
On “Chaotic Neutral,” he’s rediscovered his talent for concise, fat-free rock – the sort that powered him to four straight gold solo records in the early 2000s and to multi-platinum success with the Matthew Good Band in the decade prior.
It’s his first album on Warner Music Canada after a brief excursion into indie territory with 2013’s “Arrows of Desire.” To hear Good tell it, it wasn’t an entirely productive period.
Prior to that record, Good had been on Universal Music for 13 years, but he felt the support of the label eventually started to wane.
“I was sold a bill of goods. But at the same time – I’m not going to lie -you’re a Canadian artist. The money they threw at me … was more than any bidding-war band in the States would have got,” he explained.
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“They were like: ‘Well, we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that.’ Unfortunately, the case was you get into bed with people, some people who know what they’re doing, and other people who are new to it.
“And all of a sudden, some of them want their money back because they don’t want to be involved anymore, which, of course, is ridiculous.”
“Arrows of Desire” hit No. 6 on the Canadian chart but failed to find its legs the way Good’s previous records had. Further, he had to scrap an announced U.S. tour, which he says now was “quite an embarrassment.”
Ultimately, he figures the album never “got its due.”
Since he’s already reminiscing, it’s pointed out to Good that this year marks the 20th anniversary of his gold-selling debut: “Last of the Ghetto Astronauts.”
While some ’90s rockers have cashed in on revisiting their past hits with tours and reissues, Good shrugs off the notion.
“I don’t really think I’d like to play ‘Last of the Ghetto Astronauts’ particularly,” he said. “That doesn’t pique my interest whatsoever. Maybe when ‘Beautiful Midnight’ comes around, maybe I’d think about it, (but) it’s not like we’re getting the band back together or anything.”
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