Matt Jaffe | Music Junkie Press

Matt Jaffe hits his stride with Undertoad – picking up where David Bowie left off

March 11, 2021

Matt Jaffe has hit his stride with his latest album, Undertoad. I have been following Jaffe since he was 14 and playing hugely good guitar at a house concert series in Northern California and have been waiting for this album since then. At the age of 16 he was discovered by Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads and together they produced his first album. Seven good albums later, Undertoad has positioned him for the very big time. With 7 sophisticated songs that transcend the boundaries of rock and create an urgent universe of their own. Undertoad opens with “Broken Flowers” , a song that makes you sway, cry, and think as its hypnotic guitar and his high-pitched but perfectly modulated voice carry you into a Leonard Cohen-like cinematic world, but with a rock beat. Keeping up the energy in “Punch Drunk Love” Jaffe moves the pitch even higher, while staying smooth and addictive as he spins out a tale we all know. He stays in the deep emotional narrative mode with “Beacon in the [Read More]

Matt Jaffe and the Distractions expand their LA audience at The Federal Bar in NoHo.

July 10, 2014

By Patrick O’Heffernan, Host, Music FridayLive! Matt Jaffe brought his high energy rock band The Distractions to North Hollywood’s Federal last night, energizing a respectable audience and demonstrating that he can play in larger venues in Los Angeles, the nation’s music capital. This was a return trip for the young new wave band, having previously opened for bands at The Central in Santa Monica and the venerable, if smaller, The Mint. The young (he just finished his first year at Yale) northern California-raised guitarist and his band mates drummer Alex Coltharp and bassist Sammie Fischer have mastered the high-spirited sound that he shifted to when he exchanged the acoustic music of his high school days for an electric guitar. With songwriting that shimmers with the best of the hard rock groups in the Southland clubs these days, Matt led his bandmates in nine new songs that showed how he has moved far beyond the slick blend-into-the-background pop music that surrounds us. And his lyrics always give us something to think about. I suspect the audience would [Read More]