Matchbox Twenty headlined the Mohegan Sun Arena on Friday night, offering up a two hour, 26-song set.
Rob Thomas
It may have been 20 minutes too long.
The evening started out strong with a soulful “Parade” followed by the hit “Bent,” but ended flat with an encore that included a clunky version of David Bowie’s “Changes.” There was enough good material in between to suggest a shorter set would have left the audience wanting more rather than feeling like enough was enough.
Matchbox Twenty is seventeen years into a career that has seen only four albums, has been hampered by two long hiatuses, and has witnessed some minor personnel changes (Adam Gaynor left in 2005). Between their 1996 debut “Yourself or Someone Like You” and “Mad Season” (released in 2000) they were one of the top bands in the land.
In those days, Matchbox Twenty banged out 75 minute, 13-song sets of pure pop rock hits. Never a dull moment. They’ve since doubled the quantity of the content without doubling the quality.
Thomas, who could really do this material with anyone and have similar results, told the audience he had a plan.
“We are gonna play as many songs as we can until they drag us off stage,” he said. “After two hours we are gonna feel like we celebrated life.”
There was an unbridled celebration going on mid-set when the band kicked in to songs like “3 a.m.” and “Real World,” followed by “Girl Like That,” and “If You’re Gone.”
These are the seminal Matchbox Twenty songs, the ones fans sing along to, the ones that invoke a nostalgic response. Thomas was able to slip in a semi-acoustic version of the new single “Overjoyed,” which seemed to hold up well.
The band’s most recent latter day hit “Unwell” was another crowd-pleaser as was the follow up, a new song “Radio” which lyrically depicts the nostalgia that most of the audience was there to experience.
The show started to disintegrate from there, with a riff on The Faces “Stay With Me,” sung by guitarist Kyle Cook which was followed by another Cook vocal performance on “The Way” that doesn’t seem to fit into the M20 catalog as neatly as the rest of the material.
The encore stumbled with the aforementioned Bowie cover but Thomas was able to rescue it with “Back 2 Good,” “Mad Season,” and “Push.”