by Ann-Katherine Souilliard

Created on: February 26, 2009

I had a hard time deciding to buy "Exile on Mainstream", Matchbox Twenty's first new album in five years. It wasn't that I thought that Rob Thomas's time away to start a solo career had hurt the band, the single "How Far We've Come" seemed to me to be as good or better than their earlier stuff. What made the decision hard for me is that "Exile on Mainstream" is for the most part a greatest hits album, with six new songs added in. Matchbox Twenty is one of my favorite bands so I already owned the other albums that the greatest hits were pulled from. I did eventually buy the album, in the digital format, and I don't regret the decision. The six new songs are some of my favorite tunes on my iPod and I enjoy the remastered sound of the greatest hits tracks.

The new music on "Exile on Mainstream" has a peppier, and some might say a poppier, feel than some of Matchbox Twenty's older tracks, but the lyrics speak to similar feelings. "How Far We've Come" had me moving to the beat the first time I heard it and singing along to the chorus the second or third time through. It has a catchy tune that sticks in your head and you find yourself humming the chorus at random times, which made it a good choice for the first single to be released from this album. I think my favorite song on the album is the second track, "I'll Believe You When", I find it's chorus to be even more catchy than the first track and it's lyrics are just what every girl should be saying to a guy that's feeding her a line. I know it's written from the guy's point of view and he feels wronged by her treatment, but it's her feelings that make the song so great for me. The other four new tracks are all about holding onto the love in a relationship through the good and the bad and I find them equally singable even if they don't speak to me quite as much.

I believe the remastered greatest hits tracks are arranged in the order they were released as singles, so they are grouped by album but they aren't in the same order they appear on the original albums. The sound on these tracks is better than on the original albums and a greatest hits album is always nice since it keeps all of the hits from a band in one place. I enjoy having a good selection of Matchbox Twenty on my iPod without having to load up all of their past albums. Overall, I found this album one of my better purchases of late.

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