good band. Our fans liked being around us. As things progressed, there was more of a separation between us as performers and our fans. Even the sound of the music became less like you're talking to your friends and more sort of ambitiously epic, maybe. I think we always retained that conversational style, but it was really all we were at the beginning. I'm not saying we lost that completely, but it got swept up in us trying to be a bigger band. I think the appeal for our band might've been that we were your friend's band. Hurwitz sent the band's new demos out to major record labels, attempting to get them a new recording contract, but the labels wanted them to alter the songs to make them more marketable. "There seemed to be some kind of core ideology that was sort of at risk of being compromised from within and without", said Harris, who at the same time had begun working on a new musical project with Jake Grigg of Australian band Something with Numbers. Devoto, meanwhile, had been working on his own material which Hurwitz helped him develop into an acoustic project. Additionally, the impact of the Great Recession affected the band's ability to tour: with their extensive touring schedules, they would stay with friends or with their parents when home, but as fuel prices and other costs increased, they could no longer break even on tours and were starting to accrue debt. They decided to stay home and record, and only tour when it would be lucrative, but such opportunities became fewer and further between. "So we were home longer and longer," said Harris, "which meant we were homeless longer and longer or crashing at our parents' longer and longer." The Matches announced a hiatus on July 9, 2009. On August 12, they released their fourth album, The Matches Album 4, Unreleased; Graphics? Title? Or Not Needed?, recorded at Talking House Productions studios and produced by John Paulsen, with two tracks produced by Miles Hurwitz. The album comprised the band's most recent demos and unreleased songs, described in the release notes as "the final original recordings from the Matches prior to their hiatus." The title was the subject line of an email from Hurwitz asking about the proposed album. "The album name is basically making fun of our manager's verbose e-mails", said Harris; "[The title] was