And then, with all the grace of a fallen angel, Grbac lifts her face to the microphone and unfurls her lungs.
"Wait! Stop!" she yells. Screeching and stuttering, the band piles up behind her. Silence. In a split second, the spell evaporates. "Is there any way," Grbac continues, her voice echoing across the vast, empty room, "that I can hear some more of the other cello?"
It's early evening, and Matson Jones is finishing its sound check. Tonight is the group's CD-release show, which is odd, considering that the self-titled disc has been available for more than a year. But after the group whipped up a huge buzz that culminated in a triumphant South by Southwest appearance, Matson Jones has been reissued by Sympathy for the Record Industry -- better known as the label that launched the White Stripes. And in May, the quartet was featured as Spin.com's "Band of the Day" in a profile comparing it accurately to PJ Harvey and inexplicably to the Donnas -- that is, the author wrote, "if the Donnas had all been committed to the asylum."
"My mom was like, 'That was the weirdest article ever written about you,'" Mascorella says. Having finished the sound check, Matson Jones is squeezing in a pre-show dinner across the street from the theater. Seated around a giant, steaming pizza, the players look like some indie-rock mafia: The men are buttoned up and sporting ties, while the women wear vintage sweaters, skirts and bouffant hairdos that would make the B-52's proud.
With such a distinctive style and sound, it would be hard to mistake Matson Jones for anyone else. The most obvious analogy to draw is to Rasputina, though Matson Jones' penchant for cello-driven melodrama is much more heartfelt than thespian. But the group's dark, harrowing pulse owes more to the members' adolescent fixations: Joy Division, Tori Amos, even Nirvana.
But within this framework of angst and tension, Matson Jones' music teems with warmth. On "N.E.S.F.T.O.," a whole Pandora's box of psychosexual sludge is emptied in under two minutes as Grbac metallically intones, "Make up your mind/Show me a good time, baby/These knees won't bend for anyone/These knees won't spread for just anyone." The cryptic title, never spelled out in the lyrics of the song, only adds to the aura of pained frustration.
"I don't know if we should tell you what that stands for," Grbac says. "We've never told anyone what the name of that song meant before. It's not a huge secret, but . . ."
"At least tell the S.E.P. story," Mascorella interjects, referring to Matson Jones' hushed, brooding closer, "S.E.P. Ruined My Life."
"S.E.P. stands for Summer Enrichment Program," Grbac explains. "It has to do with a boyfriend going off to be a summer camp counselor and over-bonding with other counselors. I came to really despise this summer camp. It wasn't really a huge deal, though. When I wrote it, I was just kind of joking around. It's not as dramatic as it sounds. It's supposed to be kind of sarcastic."
"Yeah, most of the time, my lyrics are really ironic," Mascorella adds. "I like to write about really personal things, but my problem is, I sometimes find myself coming from the Morrissey school of lyrics. People just don't get it sometimes. I'm rarely terribly serious. Even if it's a serious song, I'm making fun of the situation."
But fun is the last word that springs to mind while being exposed to the CD's single "A Little Bit of Arson Never Hurt Anyone." Smart-ass title aside, it's a brutally unsettling listen. Akin to Bikini Kill kicking Black Heart Procession's balls, the song smolders with insinuation before leaping into an inferno of unfettered rage: "I've got people to see and places that I've got to burn down/Secrets that I need to burn out of my head."
When it comes to burning secrets, though, Harada is the one with a dark history of playing with fire. As he confesses, "When I was a kid, I used to set a lot of things on fire. But I only got caught once. I was lighting fireworks off in the field behind my parents' house, and it caught on fire. I tried to stomp it out wearing flip-flops, and I totally got burned. All the neighbors came out to see what was going on. It really brought the community together."
Harada's bandmates had slightly less incendiary -- if no less embarrassing -- tendencies as children. Regan almost blushes at his disclosure of a clandestine past as a junior varsity football player, and Mascorella admits to being "pretty dorky" and performing dance routines in front of her grandmother to Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It" -- long before she was old enough to realize how blatantly obscene the song was.
"When I was little, I was a ballerina, just this prissy little girl," Grbac chips in as she meticulously picks every chunk of tomato off her slice of pizza. "Then in middle school, I turned into a tomboy and got painfully, painfully shy, which made it hard to perform at first. I'd always want to throw up and pee my pants. I'm not as shy anymore."
Indeed, the four no longer have the luxury of being bashful. With a hectic schedule ahead of them, they're scrambling to adapt to life in the spotlight. Still, they're trying to hold on to as many of their secrets as they can. They had to wrangle with Sympathy to ensure that the cover of its reissued disc wasn't plastered with their pictures; as it turns out, the CD has neither photos of the band nor lyrics. Which is exactly as Matson Jones wants it.
"I don't like having everything out on the table," Grbac says. "If you have a certain amount of vagueness, people have more to work with. If you completely spell everything out, then it has to be that. It takes something away from the people who are listening."
"There's only so much gut-spilling you can do," Mascorella agrees.
"In general," Grbac sums up with a smile, "we like to have mystery."
A few hours later, back at the Bluebird, Matson Jones is finishing up an intense, flawlessly ominous set in front of a packed house. The group doesn't even have time to exit the stage before a thunderous call for an encore is unleashed. People are losing their shit. Making their way back to their instruments to throw down two final songs, the players seem more awed than anyone else. They may wish for privacy and intimacy, but good luck. With fans already making that kind of frenzied noise over the band, there's no way Matson Jones is going to be able to keep a lid on things much longer.
