There’s a lot of artists that do a great job of making their live sets feel personal, but I’d reckon Jonah Matranga is the blueprint. He’s as much a storyteller from the stage as he is in his recorded works, whether it comes in the form of his solo project onelinedrawing, his criminally under-publicized pop-rock one-off album as Gratitude, or Far — whose 30th anniversary of the rollicking album “Tin Cans With Strings To You” he celebrated at The Side Door in Sacramento on April 3 in stripped-down-ish form.
I admit I was skeptical when Matranga pulled out a drum machine on his phone in lieu of having a live drummer on stage, but I’ll be damned, it made for a unique and surprisingly great sounding set. For a guy in this mid-50s, I’d say he and the band (a handful of friends not from the original line-up lending their talents) managed to capture the more aggressive aspects that make this album — a post-hardcore/emo classic — so special. Matranga’s vocal delivery in particular carried such an incredible weight and energy.
Overall, as fantastic as everything sounded, the show was almost less about the songs and more about the trappings of capitalism when it infiltrates the arts; the corrupting nature of power; the necessity of consent; struggles with mental health and self-acceptance; leaning into gender fluidity and releasing oneself of labels; the value of community and loving one another; and how sick it is that one of your songs (Job’s Eyes) wound up in an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.