Matchbook Romance, Ready to Take Action

That's because Epitaph label head (and Bad Religion guitarist) Brett Gurewitz, an inveterate Net-trawler, came across a particularly enthusiastic post on punknews.org and downloaded the track "Ex Marks the Spot."

And immediately e-mailed Jordan.

Who dismissed it as a joke. "We'd been around other bands who were known as jokers," he explains. Plus, "on the Epitaph Web site, it had said, 'If it's not punk rock, don't send it to us.' And we're not punk rock, so we never sent it out. The second I told Brett that, he called and told them to change that on the site."

Gurewitz produced the band's EP "West for Wishing" and got the group on the first of three straight Warped tours and last year's inaugural Epitaph tour, which, as the label's biggest band, Matchbook Romance headlined.

Roadwork influenced the band's sound on the new album, Jordan says. "Being on tour, being surrounded by our instruments 24/7, setting up the [tour bus] back lounge as a studio, sacrificing free space promoted nothing but creativity and getting better at our instruments," he says. "And learning from other musicians around us, living the life and seeing other parts of the world, meeting new people, seeing different cultures -- it was almost like going to school for learning how to be a better musician. It totally sharpened us up."

On "Voices," Matchbook Romance experiments with a bit more progressive rock, with shifting dynamics, unconventional melodies, strings, even occasional dissonance. Part of that is trying to shed the emo tag, although, Jordan adds: "I never really minded what people called us. I just always thought we were just a rock 'n' roll band. If people wanted to generalize, that was fine, but most generalizations are off. They'd say we wear tight pants and have our hair in our eyes, and none of us do. We don't even dress to impress. We walk onstage wearing the same clothes we wore all day; some of us will even roll out of a bunk and walk onstage!

"The most important thing we wanted to prove is that our music wasn't the simple thing that [some critics] considered to be this lame new trend called emo or whatever, to prove that we have talent, that we're more than they think we are."

The lyrics are also a bit denser, darker, even a little angrier on the relationship front. For instance, the debut album track "Promise" was an emotional plea to Jordan's then-girlfriend, begging her not to leave him while he's separated from her on tour.

"That didn't pan out, unfortunately," Jordan says. " 'Voices' is all about what's happened to me in the last three years, and a lot of it is about that relationship, about how it ended. I thought it would be pretty cool to write a continuation of it, how being on tour in a band kind of wrecked it."

Jordan, noting that other factors led to the breakup, points to such songs as "You Can Run, but We'll Find You," "Surrender," "Goody, Like Two Shoes" and "Say It Like You Mean It," which had several meanings, including a caustic dismissal of vacuous pop-punk bands.

"If you truly love somebody and want to be with somebody, say it like you mean it. Don't try and beat around the bush or waste somebody's time," Jordan says. "Also, with 'Voices,' we needed to not waste people's time. We needed to make sure this record was everything possible. It was really a message to myself to dig into myself as far as possible.

"I don't know if it's a good way to write, to just talk about yourself and your own experiences, but it's stuff that means something to me and it's my art and it's what I do. Hopefully people can relate to it and enjoy it, and hopefully it won't get too redundant."

Matchbook Romance Appearing Wednesday at the 9:30 club and Thursday at Sonar in Baltimore with Silverstein, the Early November, Amber Pacific and Paramore Sounds Like: Grown-up pop-punk emo