Chicago Sun-Times, Monday, July 5, 1993
Great weather provided the perfect backdrop for Matthew Sweet's Grant Park concert Sunday
By Jae-Ha Kim
It was near the end of Matthew Sweet's free concert Sunday at Grant Park that he broke free of expectations. He'd already played a few numbers from his 1991 breakthrough LP Girlfriend and debuted a good chunk of new songs from his upcoming album Altered Beast. But it wasn't until he covered some rock 'n' roll classics that the crowd caught a glimpse of his inner workings.
For his last two encores, Sweet chose songs by John Lennon and the Troggs. Sound like an odd choice of artists? Not really, given Sweet's penchant for meshing beautifully crafted lyrics to ferocious guitars. Deferring lead guitar to on-again off-again guitarist Richard Lloyd, Sweet turned in a breathtaking rendition of Lennon's introspective "Cripped Inside." But it was his tongue-in-cheek cover of the Trogg's "I Want You" that had fans clamoring for more.
Hiding behind a fringe of bangs and a baggy striped shirt, Sweet's boyish charm belied his deep range of feelings. Articulate and streetwise, he doesn't cloak words, but rather says what he feels such as in his first hit single "Girlfriend" ("I want to love somebody/I hear you're looking for someone to love").
That he didn't perform such standar Sweet concert songs such as "I've Been Waiting" and "Winona" seemed to be less concern to the fans than their unfamiliarity with his new material, particularly the ballads.
At this point in his career, Sweet has nothing to prove. All his albums have been critical successes - even the ones from previous labels from which he was dropped for not being commercial enough - and Girlfriend showed he has what it takes to be a star. Altered Beast is an ambitious project that takes the pop he's known for, distorts it and throws it back with some joyous feedback.
Sunday was a beautiful day to prove his musical point. Unlike Friday's Lollapalooza where fans battled rain to see bands performing, the weather behaved for Sweet and his opening acts Belly and the Jayhawks. The concert was a fitting end to the city's 10-day Taste of Chicago.
Unlike the Jayhawks, who opened the four-hour music fest with a taut 45-minute set that sounded, for better or worse, like their recordings, Belly turned in a fierce set that bettered their recent show at Metro. When vocalist Tanya Donnelly sang the band's best known line, "So take your hat off boy when you're talking to me," the fans were listening.
Much more aggressive than Donnelly's last band, Throwing Muses, Belly is strong without being cloying . Driven by her deceptively flexible vocals and crunching guitars, Belly had a strong contingent of fans that may have bettered Sweet's - or at least were more vocal about their appreciation.
Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, July 6, 1993
Hot weather, music draw a huge Petrillo audience
By Greg Knot, Rock music critic
The pope, the Bulls, and now, Matthew Sweet.
That's what it takes to fill Gran Park with people, and the beach-blanket city that spanned from the Petrillo stage all the way to Monroe Street on Sunday was testament to Sweet's drawing power.
A balmy, sultry holiday afternoon didn't hurt, nor did the fact that the show was free, sponsored by WXRT (FM 93.1) as a capper to a raucous week of music, food and fireworks along the lakefront.
Under such conditions, musicianship usually takes a vacation. But the performances by opening acts Belly and the Jayhawks were commendable, and Sweet's was easily the best he's given in a string of Chicago appearances over the last year.
A big reason for that was his new touring band: guitarist Richard Lloyd (Television), bassist Tony Marcuso (Cruzados, Bob Dylan) and drummer Will Rigby (db's).
In the past, Sweet's delciate balance of pop finesse and rockish energy has been toppled in concert by sloppiness. But Rigby kept the groove steady, Marcuso's fat bass lines and splendid harmonies added richness and texture, and the ongs never seemed rushed or out of control.
Into this orderly pop universe, Lloyd sprayed guitar shrapnel. On "Does She Talk?" he answered each line sung by Sweet with an increasing frantic flurry, and mirrored the desparation of the singer's pleas of "Dying from desire, dying for desire" on "In Too Deep."
Sweet plucked favorites such as "Evangline" and "Divine Intervention" from his 1 1/2-year-old Girlfriend album and ripped through John Lennon's "Crippled Inside" and the Troggs' proto-punk "I Want You" for encores. But the most compeeling aspect of the set was the half-dozen new songs introduced from his forthcoming Altered Beast album.
Particularly strong were "Devil with the Green Eyes," in which Lloyd wrapped barbed wire around a jangly guitar riff, and the lush ballad "Reaching Out" and "Pull the Trigger." Typically, Sweet sang of love as a waste land of missed opportunities and toxic dependencies.
He slammed shut "Devil with the Green Eyes" with a warning: "Every love I've ever known, every love I've ever known is dead."
Presenting the flip side of Sweet's subversive power pop were the Jayhawks, whose twangy rock tunes evoked Gram Parsons doing the Rolling Stones ("Take Me With You") and Neil Young loping with Crazy Horse ("Waiting for the Sun"). On "Two Angels" and a cover of Time Hardin's "Reason to Believe," the voices of Mark Olson and Gary Louris meshed with Louvin Brothers plaintiveness. The band's rhythm section framed the singers nicely, but didn't expand much beyond the non-groove of '70s country-rock.
Belly is one of the year's unlikeliest successes. After playing second fiddle in the acclaimed Throwing Muses for years, guitarist Tanya Donelly formed Belly and soon surpassed sales of her former band.
The hit "Feed the Tree" sounds like a one-shot wonder. Not that Donelly is without talent, but the bulk of her material - moody and atmospheric with a hint of dirginess - has more in common with Throwing Muses' more oblique pop than with MTV trendiness.
On Sunday afternoon, however, that didn't matter. Looking out into an audience numbering in the six figures, each band on the bill must've figured it was doing something right.