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The lead up to Blue was something of a cyclone. After recording My Degeneration (2003) with producer Rob Cavallo, Flashlight Brown set out on an intensive, and sometimes unconventional, tour of North America and Japan. The band spent several weeks playing noon-hour concerts in West Coast high schools, fuelled by cocktails smuggled past suspicious school administrators. For Matt Hughes, the trip was more than just a string of gigs—it was a revenge fantasy fully fleshed. “I was the classic nerd in high school,” he laughs. “I didn’t kiss a girl until I was 18. After graduating as a geek, it felt pretty good to come back as the guy in the band.” Between arena tours with Sum 41 and east coast jaunts with All-American Rejects the band blew off steam with van-to-van fireworks wars and by rolling shopping carts into hotel pools, usually with someone in them.

When the mayhem was over and the smoke began to clear it was time to go back to the drawing board. For the next two years the band retired to their basement studio to write four albums’ worth of material. A lot of these new songs were diverse and experimental, a sidetrack that eventually led the band to realize they were leaving behind what they really loved most about the music they played. Through some careful soul searching this wealth of material was explored and a new voice was exposed that was both fresh and familiar.

Blue (produced by Dave Bassett and mixed by Dave Holman) draws as much from The Clash and The English Beat as it does from Nirvana and the Beatles. The eleven new tracks tell the classic human story about life, love and laughter, and how all three will ultimately gang up to take a giant shit on you.

With a songwriting team made up of an ex-role playing club president (Matt Hughes) and a former English-as-a-second-language student (Fil Bucchino), Flashlight knows that there’s a lot more to underdog slacker anthems than rich suburbanites bitching about the first girl that broke their precious little heart. This is self-deprecating satire of the highest order, whether detailing depression with a caustic wit, or, as in leadoff track “That’s My Problem”, singing about hangovers from rock’ n’ roll decadence with “chicks on crack rocking out to Nickelback”

The characters in the songs might be losers, but as in any good after school special the chronically uncool underdog always has to win in the end. Witness the new songs “I’m Not Sorry” or the self-help anthem “Party By Myself,” a “Pictures of Lily” homage that’s not entirely metaphorical. “I actually do like to party by myself,” says Matt. “Set me up with a six-pack and some video games and I’m set.”

The band is well aware of how easy it is to fall into a trap of self-pity. “If you complain in the verse, that’s fine, but if you complain in the chorus, you’re whining. One thing we never want to come off as is chronic malcontents”.

Most of the songs on Blue throw a lyrical twist on traditional rock themes. “Sicker” is a classic love song from the point of view of an asthmatic, allergic, pharmaceutical addicted hypochondriac. “Sickness and heartache are really one and the same,” says Hughes, “and for me, both are usually just a product of my own paranoia.” “Ugly Baby” was inspired by a study done at a university that found parents treat pretty babies better than ugly ones. “I know it sounds depressing, but we couldn’t stop laughing.”

Hughes never has to look far for inspiration. Songwriting partner Bucchino, who was born in Venezuela, raised in Italy and then eventually moved to Canada, has what Hughes describes as “that English-as-a-second-language problem.” According to the vocalist, in addition to providing hours of entertainment, Bucchino’s mangling of the language has also been known to spark some unusual lyric ideas. Case in point: new song “Get Out Of My Car,” whose title came about after the bassist misinterpreted the Rolling Stones hit, “Get Off Of My Cloud.”

“We’re aware of the fact that there’s nothing sexy about us,” says Matt, “but in the end most sexy things sag anyway. This is rock and roll.”

As Fil puts it, “Styles come and go, but no one can get rid of us. When the world is finally flattened by nuclear Armageddon, there’ll be the roaches and Flashlight Brown. We don’t plan on going away.”


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