Matt Costa by Joel Peterson

For Matt Costa, life was a choice between skateboarding and guitar. High School never really entered into the equation. After a leg-shattering wreck in 2003, guitar ostensibly chose him. The 25-year-old Huntington Beach native, Jack Johnson understudy, and folkie on the rise used his lengthy recovery time to hone his jingle-jangle licks while, presumably, the trucks of his skateboard rusted slowly in some dark corner. After befriending No Doubt guitarist Tom Dumont through the rich So-Cal arts scene, Costa started recording the compositions he’d made while injured. Dumont went on to produce Costa’s first full-length, Songs We Sing. After a stint of summer music festivals and a tour with Brushfire Records label-mate Jack Johnson, Costa now finds himself headlining (and selling out) a tour in support of his new album, Unfamiliar Faces.

Friday, February 8th, Costa played to a sold out, all-ages audience at Seattle’s El Corazon. Fathers’ daughters were dropped off by the SUV-full to see the brown-eyed crooner perform his dreamy tunes. To an objective first timer like myself, Costa’s shy-guy delivery and aw-shucks stage presence flirted with phlegmatic, but the opinion that he seemed uninspired was the minority opinion. My informal exit polls pegged him as “cute,” and even “amazing.”

Most songs were strict interpretations of their album versions, but (not surprisingly) lacked Dumont’s sparkling production. The ragtime, toe-tapping “Mr. Pitiful” begged for an extended version. I had hoped to see Costa pounding away at the infectious piano-hook while the band toed the line before rounding it up for a final chorus, or two, or three. Friday’s presentation felt like Costa surreptitiously snuck the song into the middle of the set only to saltate forward to sing-along classics (if you’re 16) like “Sunshine” and “Behind the Moon.” Perhaps Costa is not yet comfortable with the pianist role he assumed on Unfamiliar Faces.

After the underwhelming “Mr. Pitful,” Costa remarked, “I’m going to play something softer.” With things feeling deflated already, I braced myself. Along came “Vienna,” a sensitive new song about missing an American girl while in Germany. But just as the energy of Costa’s pop songs was stifled, the emotive longing of “Vienna” was unaffecting.

Returning onstage for an encore, Costa finally showed a glimmer of personality. An intimate, solo-acoustic performance of  “Astair” from Songs We Sing gave him a chance to show off what 18 months of lying around with a guitar propped gingerly over a broken femur can do for a person’s finger-picking prowess. If Costa wishes to eschew the pages of Teen Beat, there’s hope for him in moments like these. Otherwise, keep the sing-alongs coming—Dad’s warming up the Yukon.