For their fourth album North, riding on more than 15 years of success that has launched Rob Thomas's solo career and seen a string of hits such as Unwell and 3am, drummer Paul Doucette says Matchbox Twenty can afford to be themselves.
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''One hundred per cent,'' he says. ''That's kind of what we were going for. Trying to make something that is as honest to where we are in life as possible.''
Comfortable with what they do, and where their place is in the music lexicon, Doucette says with North the band has made a record that represents its take on good music.
''Any time that we do something we want it to come out like we want it to come out,'' he says. ''And that's sort of the only thing that we have control of. All we can do is hit our own barometer of what we believe is good.''
It's a winning formula, though one that they only get so much time to put into practise. Scheduling is vital when your lead singer has carved a career for himself in parallel, though nevertheless apart from the Matchbox embrace.
''It's definitely a challenge,'' Doucette says. ''The fact is that we take a lot of time in between records because of it. So there is a fair amount of 'Hey, you remember us?' that we kind of have to do, and we recognise that. I wouldn't say that we are mad about it, but we definitely recognise it as a challenge that we have.
''And then there is the scheduling. The pure scheduling issue of 'we're ready to do a record', and Rob's on the road, that kind of stuff. It definitely gets to be something that we have to deal with. That's part of our dynamic.'' But it isn't like it's all about Thomas.
''To his immense credit, Rob is one of the least diva-ish people I've ever met,'' Doucette says. ''He's super chilled. The reality is that if Rob has commitments in his solo career, he has commitments, there is nothing we can do about it.''
Pulled together through short writing sessions over the course of a year, the band wrote North concentrating on the inspiration, rather than the craft component of songwriting. ''We did a greatest hits [Exile on Mainstream] a few years ago and we worked with a producer named Steve Lillywhite,'' Doucette says. ''And he was very big on not interrupting the inspiration part of something creative. There are two different parts of the brain. The craft thing is more of skill that you learn whereas inspiration is more something that sort of flows and hopefully you can catch it. So if you go too much into the brain thing, it messes up the inspiration part. We wanted to be really conscious of separating those two.''
Matchbox Twenty
WITH: INXS, Evermore
WHERE: AIS Arena
WHEN: Thursday, October 25, 8pm
TICKETS: $79.90 from ticketek.com.au
■ Arne Sjostedt is a music writer, former drummer and an avid tunes fan
