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As told by Cale Sauter

There was a time when a wordsmith with an acoustic guitar and a few clever turns of phrase could become a pied paper, drawing the youth of America out of comfortable hiding into a ratty local joint or house party. As underground music has expanded and become more experimental, songs that told stories or had meaning to young people coming of age seemed to give way to fashion and irreverence.

The Matadors of Shame, however, are on the frontline of a second wave of heart-on-sleeve story-telling, although they’ve replaced the acoustic guitars with drunken, ramshackle punk rock.

Under the guise of guys just wanting to have fun, there is a sense of confession in the band’s rhetoric. They’re like the guy next to you at a party who he begins to feel the euphoria of alcohol thinning the bloodstream and starts to explain the meaning of it all to you while you’re just relaxing. If for only one moment in time, this person is convinced they have it figured out — only to start over from dehydrated scratch the next morning. One would be hard-pressed to find a more honest soundtrack to being 20-something in East Lansing than the Matadors’ five-star notebook punk rock.