MOST musicians throw hissy fits when their music gets leaked on the Internet. But when the Matches’ third album, “A Band in Hope,” leaked in February, a full month ahead of its scheduled release, the band didn’t get their knickers in a knot.
This Zen approach was largely due to the fact that the Oakland-based alt-rock quartet was partly responsible for putting the record out there in the first place.
“Pretty much all of our friends in [other] bands had the record; we told them to give it to their friends to listen to,” says lead singer/guitarist Shawn Harris.
“At some point, the degree of separation became such that people who had no personal connection to us obtained the record, and then it found its way online.”
Believing that every cloud really can have a silver lining, Harris points out that it’d be kind of a bummer if the record didn’t leak – “because that would mean that nobody was interested in listening to it.”
From those who grabbed the record for free, all the band asks in return is a video of a random act of kindness – “like putting a rose in someone’s shoe at the gym, something simple but pretty” – submitted through thematches.com.
“It’s not monetary, but people can give back. Sometimes those things get stretched further than $10 anyhow,” Harris says.
Not that he’d mind it if you bought the album, a band T-shirt or ticket to the Matches’ April 11 gig at Irving Plaza.
It’s a sentiment that falls in line with the band’s outlook these days. Not everything they do is about making money. After the Matches’ 2006 album “Decomposer” – the best thing that Harris thought he would ever create – failed to zoom to No. 1 on the commercial charts, Harris threw in the towel.
“We were disappointed because we were told things were meant to go another way, we felt like we were letting people down, and that’s a
sh – – – y feeling,” he says.
But then, “we realized that we’re not writing songs to pay rent,” he says. “Any band that’s trying to do something financially is not a band that’s going to be worth listening to. We needed the reality check. We’re making music to make music.”
While having this epiphany, Harris was also feverishly writing songs, including “Wake the Sun” (download it at nypost.com), the lead single off the eclectically upbeat disc “A Band in Hope.”
Written on a train platform after a long night out, the song reflects the contradiction inherent in everything associated with the album, from the title (read it aloud for full effect) to the white-flag theme the band has chosen.
“Flags serve to unite and divide people, but the white flag is neither of those things. It’s just the give-up flag, the surrender flag. But you can fly a surrender proudly, and that’s what we’re doing,” Harris says. “Giving up gave us hope, made us strong and made us come together to make this album and future albums.”
