Inside The Credits 039: Matt Wallace
Matt Wallace’s Two Album Peak, To My Ears
Have you ever had a friend, acquaintance, or lover enter your life and fill it with verve and passion on two separate momentary occasions, but otherwise not really hold a place of significance? I’m not even sure if I have yet in life, but it does sound like something that could happen or be a circumstance that may be true for someone. Maybe it could even be an interesting movie premise if it was more fleshed out? Anywho…this is what doing this credit dive into legacy producer Matt Wallace made me think of.
I’ve seen a plethora of clips from Spin’s Lipps Service podcast hosted by Scott Lipps on Tik Tok recently that have gotten me to check out some more recent rock acts. Lipps himself on one of the clips did a top five list of what are, to him, the best current New York acts and one of them was Des Rocs. I personally have become quite uninterested in modern rock artists (besides the glaring exception, Willow), however, Des Rocs 2023 album Dream Machine completely woke my ears up.
I immediately scoured the credits, found a few core producers on the album, and looked back through their catalogs. Matt Wallace was the only one who had past work that jumped out to me. He produced the entirety of Maroon 5’s debut 2002 masterpiece Songs About Jane, which is still my favorite album from that year. I listened to pieces of all the other full albums Wallace produced in his career, which began in the late 80s, and honestly, didn’t really like anything else. This wasn’t all due to Wallace’s production, which had some cool moments, but it was the combo of the styles that weren’t within my taste and many of the vocalists’ tones which just hit my ear wrong.
Wallace’s work blew me away significantly twice, but only twice. I was almost motivated to move on to a different producer but this one thought kept circling through my mind, “This is kinda of a cool thing, and definitely unique.” It made me envision that circumstance I wrote about in the first paragraph and even think about human relationships in general. Obviously, our more lasting and consistent relationships end up having the most value, but those short-lived intense connections with people still hold real weight even if they have less worth.
Funny enough, Songs About Jane will always be tied to my first ever “relationship.” The term must be used quite loosely because it was such a whirlwind of a thing that never felt quite real. I was in sixth grade, she was in eighth grade. She liked me, I couldn’t believe it. We were in Into The Woods together, we (kind of in that awkward middle school way) kissed backstage. We were officially dating somehow, went to one movie with a group of other friends, and I definitely never looked cooler before or after in a school environment. She showed me Songs About Jane, told me about her crush on Adam Levine, and I cried to “She Will Be Loved” when she inevitably ended it right before she graduated.
I don’t think I ever ran into my first “girlfriend” again, so there’s no parallel to the Des Rocs album, unfortunately. It could’ve been cool and funny to have run into her in a random platonic way later. Maybe at a NY party in my late twenties where we had a crazy night out until 4am and then she was gone with the wind. That also feels like what the Des Rocs album sounds like. Songs About Jane chronicles young love and heartbreak and The Dream Machine is a barrage of rush filled spurts of elation. What Wallace does so well on both albums is hone in on an essential passage of purity and guide it into a condensed and potent musical moment. He takes Levine’s croons and cries and supports them with just enough musicality and arranging so they don’t come across cheesy, but instead heartfelt. He layers ravishing instrumental sequences beneath Des Rocs so he can belt to high heavens without ever feeling too overindulgent.
Through this analysis, I’ve realized that regardless of how sparsely Wallace's work does intersect with my taste, his music still means as much to me as producers who’ve made five to ten albums that I like. My favorite song he produced on The Dream Machine is fittingly titled “Never Ending Moment.” Wallace has done an impeccable job of making the few sonic moments where our tastes have aligned linger.
Inside The Credits 039: Matt Wallace- The Playlists