Roy Forbes
Strikin’ Matches LIVE! (AKA)

The general unreliability of music criticism is evident in the fact that some Straight staffers view Roy Forbes as a mellow has-been, while others find the North Van singer-songwriter almost unbearably intense. Listeners in the first camp aren’t going to find much validation here.

Strikin’ Matches LIVE! documents a typical Forbes concert appearance, with the singer tearing his heart wide-open while expressing both love and pain through enough melisma to make a hundred Roy Orbisons swoon. But you can’t say subtlety isn’t the singer’s forte. Forbes likes to let fly, but his guitar-playing can get unexpectedly jazzy, and it’s always syncopated enough to more than make up for the absence of a band. And if his voice is a love-it-or-leave-it proposition, there’s no denying the quality of his writing; there are half a dozen songs here that could have become Nashville hits, had they ever gotten into the right hands.

It might not be too late for that. This disc probably exists because Forbes needed something new on the merch table, it having been almost a decade since his last solo release. But it’s probably most valuable as a songwriting demo. Off-stage, Forbes is a small, quiet guy but he could fit right in with the country chart-makers at Big Loud Shirt.