Let's start from the outside in. The first thing that a band or artist gets to impress the people who may or may not pick up their record is of course, the outside of the album, the artwork. The album cover for "And" by singer/songwriter Jonah Matranga is a fresh breath from the dark dreary album covers that have started taking over the market. The one thing that stood out to me the most with the album materials however, was the liner notes. Included with the liner notes were lyrics to the song and guitar chord notation. I had never seen that in liner notes before, and it intrigued me to the point that I had to immediately pop the album in.

So let's get to the real content of it all, the music. The introduction song starts you off with a soft acoustic melody and sets the tone for the rest of the album. Along the lines of other college acoustic sounds like Guster, or the early years of Better Than Ezra's "Closer" album, the entire record is an easy listen, something that you could put on and mellow out to.

I have to say that my favourite tracks on the album are track number four, "Every Mistake", a soft love ballad that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It's a beautiful song, touching and the soft heartfelt vocals make it that much more emotional.

Secondly track number seven, "Waving or Drowning", a bit more upbeat than the previous tracks, and a completely relatable song, with excellent lyrics such as "So am I settling down, or am I going under? Am I waving or drowning? I'm beginning to wonder. Maybe I'll never be sure if I'll ever be good, but I should." Jonah Matranga has all the componants in this album, beautiful vocals, excellent guitar playing and instrumentation, and lovely lyrics.

It's so hard to try and describe an album in a relatable way, especially if it's an artist that you may not have heard before. To compare an artist to others I feel rather cheapens the integrity of the music, but we try to get across the sound without resorting to completely technical terms. So far I've described Jonah Matranga as sounding like a cross of Guster, Better Than Ezra, and have typed and deleted Relient K's MmmHmm album at least four times. But when it comes right down to it, "And" is an album in and of itself, and it so worth it to listen to and purchase. For those of you who love to take chances on new artists, I would recommend taking the chance on Jonah Matranga.