Copyright Muze UK Ltd. 1989 - 1998
b. 6 October 1964, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. Before the success of his third album, Girlfriend, Matthew Sweet had been best known for his work in the late 80s with the Golden Palominos. Before that, in the early 80s, he had recorded under the name Buzz Of Delight, based in Athens, Georgia, issuing a mini-album entitled Sound Castles which was produced by Don Dixon. Two further albums of "keyboard doodlings" were never released. His partner on the first of these albums was Dave Pierce. Both also performed with Oh-OK, the Athens band featuring Linda Stipe (sister of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe), which later evolved into Magnapop. Inside, his debut solo album under his own name, followed in 1986, and featured contributions from the Bangles and Chris Stamey. Included in the production credits was Alan Tarney, who produced Cliff Richard 's Devil Woman, as well as material by Dream Syndicate. On Girlfriend Sweet was accompanied by New York musicians including Fred Maher (of Material), Robert Quine (ex- Lou Reed; Richard Hell And The Voidoids) and Richard Lloyd (ex- Television), plus the UK's Lloyd Cole and the Velvet Crush drummer Ric Menck (Lloyd, Menck and Quine had first appeared on Earth). The mature rock of Girlfriend, which went on to sell over half a million copies in the USA, was compared by some to Neil Young and Big Star, despite its shoestring recording budget. Son Of Altered Beast remixed the best track from Altered Beast, "Devil With The Green Eyes," and added five live tracks recorded with Lloyd, Menck and Quine in October 1993 and January 1994. For 100% Fun that trio and Sweet were joined by Greg Leisz (formerly with k.d. lang) on pedal steel and mandolin, with Brendan O'Brien ( Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, Soundgarden) producing. In acknowledgement of his popularity in the Far East, it was accompanied by a comic that featured Sweet. The touring band for 1995 added Tony Marsico (bass) and Stuart Johnson (drums). Blue Sky On Mars was crammed with appealing hooks, nifty breaks and snappy songs - all with high commercial potential but none with the mark of "a truly great pop song." Sweet has oodles of talent spread over numerous songs but the "classic" monster composition still eludes him.
By Aaron Milenski
Matthew Sweet was a member of Lynda Stipe's band Oh-OK and his
own pop duo Buzz Of Delight before he got his big break in the
mid-80s. His first two solo albums contain some strong pop songs
almost completely destroyed by the production and arrangements,
in which overemphasis on synthesizers and drum programming strips
the energy from the songs. His third album, Girlfriend
(Zoo, 1992), was a radical change of style, showcasing stunning
lead guitar playing from Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine (both
from the original 70s New York punk scene, and two of the best
guitarists in rock and roll history), and more importantly, a
newfound confidence that made his pop songs sparkle. His most
recent album 100% Fun (Zoo, 1995) while not as critically
acclaimed as Girlfriend or the subsequent Altered Beast
(Zoo, 1993) is, in my opinion, his best album yet, full of
killer hooks, absolutely gorgeous harmonies, and perfect pop
arrangements that allow the guitar playing to augment the music
rather than dominate it. His commercial success gives hope to the
future of pop music in America.
Top
By Stephen Thomas Erlewine
After spending the '80s as an unappreciated jangle-pop guitarist with Oh-OK and Lloyd Cole, as well as a solo artist, Matthew Sweet emerged in 1991 as the leading figure of the American power-pop revival. Like his British counterparts Teenage Fanclub, Sweet adhered to traditional songcraft, yet subverted the form by adding noisy post-punk guitar and flourishes of country-rock, resulting in an amalgam of the Beatles, Big Star, R.E.M. and Neil Young. Recorded with guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, Sweet's third album, Girlfriend (1991), became a word-of-mouth critical and commercial hit over the course of 1992, with its title track reaching the Top Five on the Modern Rock charts. For the next five years, as alternative rock was the dominant commercial force in rock & roll, Sweet was a popular concert attraction, and his reputation as an alternative pop singer-songwriter was at its peak -- his next two records, Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995), were both critically acclaimed and relatively successful albums, with the latter reaching gold status and making many year-end "Best Of" lists. Beginning with 1997's Blue Sky on Mars, Sweet settled into cult status, and while he wasn't enjoying the success of his previous records, most power-pop records of the latter half of the '90s were indebted to Girlfriend.
Matthew Sweet began playing music while he was a high school student in his native Lincoln, Nebraska. Upon his graduation in 1983, he decided to attend the University of Georgia in Athens because of its burgeoning underground music scene. Once he arrived at college, he met Lynda Stipe and joined her band, Oh-OK, in time to play on their second EP, the Mitch Easter-produced Furthermore What, which was released late in 1983. The following year, he and Oh-OK drummer David Pierce formed Buzz of Delight, releasing Sound Castles later that year. Over the course of 1984 and 1985, Sweet cut a demo tape with producer Don Dixon. Columbia Records heard the Buzz of Delight record and the demo and offered him a contract in 1985. Upon signing with Columbia, he relocated to New York and recorded his debut, Inside. Released in 1986, Inside featured Sweet playing nearly all of the instruments on the record, supported by a drum machine; the album also featured several cameos, including Chris Stamey, Fred Maher, Anton Fier and Aimee Mann. That same year, Sweet guested on Blast of Silence, an album by Fier's band, the Golden Palominos.
Despite positive reviews, Inside was ignored upon its release and Columbia dropped Sweet. During 1988, he signed with A&M Records and recorded his second album Earth. Produced by Fred Maher and released in 1989, Earth again featured Sweet as a one-man band, augmented by guitarists Robert Quine ( Lou Reed, Richard Hell) and Richard Lloyd ( Television). The album failed to make any impact, and A&M dropped Sweet as he was working on his third album in 1990. Over the next year, he earned money by touring as Lloyd Cole's guitarist while shopping a demo of his album to various labels, with little success. Eventually, the president of Zoo signed him upon overhearing the demo in an office. Girlfriend, an album largely inspired by the dissolution of his marriage, was the first album Sweet recorded with a live band, and its sound -- which was powered by Lloyd and Quine -- was considerably more immediate and raw than its predecessors. Upon its late 1991 release, Girlfriend earned strong reviews and "Divine Intervention" became a moderate hit, but it wasn't until the spring of 1992, when the title track took off, that the album became a genuine hit. By the end of the year, Girlfriend had gone gold and Sweet had moved to Los Angeles.
Sweet recorded the followup to Girlfriend with producer Richard Dashut, who had previously been best known for his work with Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham. Again featuring Quine and Lloyd, the resulting Altered Beast was messier than Girlfriend and consequently received mixed reviews upon release in early 1993, yet it became a sizable college radio hit on the strength of the modern rock and MTV hits "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule." After releasing the stopgap EP Son of Altered Beast in the spring of 1994, Sweet recorded his fifth album, this time with a more commercial producer - Brendan O'Brien, who had previously worked with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Released in the spring of 1995, 100% Fun received Sweet's strongest reviews to date and went gold on the strength of "Sick of Myself," his first single to scrape the bottom reaches of the pop charts.
Following 100% Fun, Sweet parted ways with Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, but retained O'Brien for 1997's Blue Sky on Mars. Despite the strong initial placing for its lead single "Where You Get Love," Blue Sky on Mars received mixed reviews upon its spring release, and it failed to match the success of its immediate predecessor.
Hailing from Lincoln, Neb., singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet attended University of Georgia-Athens in the early '80s hoping to advance in the city's legendary underground music scene. Sweet joined the local band Oh-OK, and when the group broke up in 1984 formed the band Buzz of Delight with Oh-OK drummer David Pierce. A solo demo made its way to Columbia Records, and Sweet signed a deal with the label in 1985, relocating to New York. The following year he released his solo debut, Inside, a slick effort for which Sweet played all of the instruments and brought in numerous guest artists. But the album was a commercial failure and Sweet was dropped from Columbia.
Sweet managed to get a new record deal with A&M in 1988, and released his next album, Earth, the following year. Much like Inside, the album made no commercial impact and once again Sweet was let go. To earn money while preparing his next album, Sweet toured with Lloyd Cole's backing band throughout 1990; during this time he divorced his wife of six years. Just as things seemed to be at a low for the power-pop singer, Zoo Records, impressed by the demos for the new album, offered Sweet a new record contract. Sure enough, 1991's Girlfriend became a critical and commercial success, eventually going gold and establishing Sweet as an underground sensation.
After relocating to Los Angeles, Sweet recorded his next album, 1993's Altered Beast. Though still somewhat a cult/college artist, Sweet expanded his following with the MTV hit "Time Capsule." While preparing his next album, Sweet released a 1994 EP of B-sides and out-takes called Son of Altered Beast. When 100% Fun finally came out in 1995 it was Sweet's most successful album to date, going gold on the success of the single "Sick of Myself." The 1997 follow-up Blue Sky on Mars, earned mixed reviews and was not as commercially successful, despite production work from Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots).
By Nig Hodgkins
"Everybody has these stories - 'My parents had all the great Muddy Waters records'. Well, mine had the What's New Pussycat soundtrack and stuff like that..."
Matthew Sweet should by rights be a pop icon, rather than holding what's little more than cult status. He's been around for a decade, and, though not heavy, he has a brilliant pop sensibility, soaked in such youthful influences as Elvis Costello, John Lennon, Brian Wilson and Gram Parsons, and obsessed with the quest for melody-mesmerizing choruses, crisp solos, Byrd-like harmonies, and gorgeous ballads.
Sweet was something of a music prodigy and signed to CBS in 1985, who released his debut album, Inside, the following year. Unfortunately, his pristine playing and sweetly crafted melodies were compromised, and the songs swamped by trappings of the age like chiming synths and icily sequenced drums and keyboards. An array of producers, working on separate tracks in separate locations, exacerbated the music's lack of focus.
Inside taught Sweet the meaning of control, and this would be reflected in the rapid development of his own studio expertise, and in his urge to create a tight group of associates with whom he could form lasting allegiances. CBS had written him off, however, and he did not release an album again until Earth (1989). If the debut had shown the artist overdressed, this one stripped back the excesses to reveal the taut edginess and airy melancholia that would characterize his best work. It also introduced relationships that have continued to blossom, in particular the raw, intense soloing of Robert Quine (ex-Lou Reed) and the angular guitar lines of Richard Lloyd (ex-Television). They propelled the music into tight, knotty crescendos, only then to soften the sound and give space for moments of dreamy fragility.
Sweet's next effort, recorded in New York with a new label (BMG), was Girlfriend (1991), and it proved to be the critical breakthrough on both sides of the Atlantic. Never allowing a stellar supporting cast - including Lloyd, Quine and Lloyd Cole - to mask his distinctive delivery, Sweet combined plaintive multitracked harmonies and urgent, pulsing guitar to great effect. While several tracks struck a loner's pose, it was mainly an album of love songs, epitomized by the gentle poise and balance of the country-tinged "Your Sweet Voice".
It would have been easy to go for a similar follow-up, but instead Sweet offered the weird Altered Beast (1993). This pushed apart the twin extremes of hard-edged noise and languid balladry -beautifully aided by the piano work of the late Nicky Hopkins - leaving less middle ground for the uninitiated. The lyrics had taken a darker turn, with an unsettling dose of self-hate and psychosis bubbling below. It was at times brilliant, but its appeal was more readily apparent to the converted than to the curious, and it lost much of the commercial momentum Sweet had built up.
Perhaps this accounts for the approach of Sweet's 1995 follow-up, 100% Fun - so titled both in recognition of Kurt Cobain's suicide note ('I can't pretend I'm having 100% fun every night') and as a personal reminder to lighten up. Blue Sky On Mars (Zoo Entertainment, 1997) shows him taking his own advice - having headed for Los Angeles from his cold Nebraska base seems to have worked. Easily his happiest recording and a direct exercise in clean, guitar dynamics, it should have provided Sweet with the sales his talent deserves. However, commercial success continued to elude him, for reasons that are hard to fathom. Certainly he writes songs rather than singles, and his fear of flying has limited his touring, but these should not be hindrances to a talent of this sort.
Sweet released a mini album entitled Son of Altered Beast in 1994 in North America only. It has subsequently become a much sought after import. Mainly comprised of live material it features incendiary guitar work by Richard Lloyd and comes highly recommended.
Sweet has been embraced as something of an icon by the new Power Pop movement as evidenced by the style of new releases by groups such as Fountains of Wayne and Silver Sun. Suddenly it is hip to boast of owning the first three Cheap Trick albums, rare Raspberries singles and old Todd Rundgren albums. (Note from Style Editor: None of those things are hip round my way). This sudden championing of American-styled Power Pop (big guitars, glistening hooks, crunching melodies, bold, multi layered harmonising) should result in increased exposure for Sweet who, commercially at least, has struggled to step out of Girlfriend's shadow.
It's disappointing to report therefore that Blue Sky on Mars (Zoo) fails to re-ignite Sweet's career. Jettisoning Quine and Lloyd in favour of a more straightforward, self played sound, the album suffers primarily from a lack of ambition. Melodies are less distinctive than usual and one or two tracks have a "Sweet by numbers " feel that prevents the album from truly connecting. Sweet remains an in-demand influence, guesting recently on the Jayhawks' startling "Sound of Lies" album and featuring in Mike Myers backing band over the closing credits of the movie, Austin Powers! Perhaps he needs to reinvigorate his own output with a similar sense of risk taking.
Girlfriend (1991; Zoo/BMG). The ghost of Gram Parsons hovers over the ballads, and Alex Chilton appears to offer his voice on the brash choruses, but Girlfriend is undeniably Matthew Sweet's creation, and should have sold millions.
100% Fun (1995; Zoo/BMG). Less personal than its predecessor, 100% Fun is Sweet's most direct appeal to the mainstream. Notwithstanding this broader appeal, the album retains the peculiar charms that make his work so beguiling.
By Frank Tortorici
Today is the 34th birthday of Lincoln, Neb.-born Matthew Sweet, the pop singer/songwriter who has issued a number of hook-laden albums. While Sweet has a devoted fanbase, he has never had mainstream success.
Sweet began playing music in high school and chose the University of Georgia in Athens because of its hot underground-music scene. He joined Lynda Stipe's band Oh-OK and was featured on its 1983 EP, Furthermore What, produced by Mitch Easter. The next year, he and Oh-OK drummer David Pierce formed Buzz of Delight and issued Sound Castles. While Sweet was busy cutting a demo, Columbia Records offered him a contract on the strength of Sound Castles.
Sweet moved to New York, where he recorded his 1986 solo debut, Inside, on which he played almost every instrument. That same year, Sweet also contributed to the Golden Palominos' Blast of Silence.
Columbia dropped Sweet after the critically hailed Inside failed to sell. Moving over to A&M, Sweet released 1989's Earth, which also flopped and left him again without a label. He spent some time touring as Lloyd Cole's guitarist while looking for a new record contract.
Zoo issued Sweet's 1991 album, Girlfriend, on which he was backed by guitarist Robert Quine (who worked with Lou Reed) and Richard Lloyd of Television. The critically praised album became a word-of-mouth hit and put Sweet in the center of the alternative-pop revival in the U.S. at the time.
Tracks such as "Divine Intervention" combined smooth melodies with noisy punk-guitar and the title track was a top-5 modern-rock hit. Though 1993's Altered Beast (produced by Richard Dashut, who co-helmed Fleetwood Mac's Rumours) was more abstract and sold fewer copies, Sweet played numerous shows nationwide, attended by fans who saw him as a new power-pop hero. "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule" also received considerable airplay on college-radio stations. Sweet then issued the EP Son of Altered Beast in 1994.
Things improved commercially for Sweet with the well-reviewed and gold-selling 100% Fun (1995), which featured the modern-rock hit "Sick of Myself." The disc was produced by Brendan O'Brien of Pearl Jam fame and included catchy tracks such as "We're the Same" and "Come to Love." Sweet also toured U.S. amphitheaters with Soul Asylum. In addition, Sweet contributed a version of "Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?" to the 1995 compilation album Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits.
Blue Sky on Mars (1997) received mixed reviews and was a commercial letdown, though the single "Where You Get Love" got some attention from various alternative stations.
Sweet said: "The idea that being out of place on Mars is what was interesting about the title to me. The unreality of it, the implication that you wouldn't find happiness anywhere on this planet."
Sweet toured the U.S. and Europe behind the album, which had a cover featuring '70s pop-art lettering.
Sweet has not yet announced his next project.
Of the significant bands and artists to emerge in the ‘90s, Matthew Sweet is the odd man out. During a decade when cynicism, overstatement and mean-spiritedness ruled, Sweet found a sizable audience by expressing himself with unselfconsciousness, subtlety, penetrating honesty and the sheer joy of constructing something cool.
While so many of his contemporaries disdained rock n’ roll’s past, Sweet deftly channeled it, picking up where his inspirations from previous decades had left off. A sophisticated, aural architect, Sweet absorbed the work of 60’s rock’s three Bs - the Beach Boys, Beatles and Byrds, along with ‘70s avatars Neil Young and Big Star - with such a deep understanding of the spirit as well as craft behind the music of the old masters that he was able to use these timeless palates in a fresh, highly personal way.
Sweet is that rare artist who seems directly and intimately knowable through his work; as much as anything, this belief has caused his audience to feel a close bond with him - to put them on what they think of as a first-name basis. Quite likely, it was the realization that he was adored and looked up to by his fans - and the sense of responsibility that followed - that led him to write the lines, "I don’t like knowing people/I don’t like people knowing about me" (from Altered Beast’s "Knowing People"), a declaration that revealed a genuine ambivalence about being a private person while having to project a very public persona.
Taken together, the five albums he made during the ‘90s can be seen as a young man’s spiritual journey, an old soul’s compendium of insights and a neoclassic epic from the decade’s ultimate pop formalist. This single-disc anthology hits some of the high points while displaying the musical and emotional seamlessness of a remarkable extended song cycle.
After stints in the Athens, Georgia-based Oh-OK (which also included Michael Stipe’s sister) and Buzz of Delight, Sweet, then a precocious 20 year-old college student from Lincoln, Nebraska, landed a deal with Columbia Records, who released his engaging but highly polished debut album, Inside, in 1986, to little fanfare. When his A&R man moved to A&M Records, Sweet followed, and the subsequent 1989 album, Earth, with its buoyant melodies, dueling guitars and drum machines, displayed a young artist in the process of finding himself; his approach while not yet fully formed, was adventurous and frequently disarming. But Earth caused nary a ripple, commercially or critically, and Sweet entered the new decade an obscure artist with two strikes against him.
The writing and recording processes that went into the making of the album he would eventually title Girlfriend were filled with professional and personal difficulty for Sweet - on top of A&M’s not surprising indifference, his marriage had fallen apart. Sweet may be analytical in terms of the technical aspects of music making, but his writing approach is highly intuitive, so it was inevitable that the pervasive sense of the uncertainty he was experiencing would find its way into his songs. If pain breeds art, Sweet had plenty to work with - the songs came out of him in a torrent, and it was all his left brain could do to keep up with his right brain’s outpourings.
Things took a turn for the better soon thereafter when he met and fell in love with his soul mate, Lisa. Now Sweet found himself hotwired to the full spectrum of emotions. He holed up in his little house in Princeton, NJ, writing and devoting - and the live drums he was using for the first time (for the most part, he played them himself) lent a new-found openness and vitality to the resulting tracks.
Sweet spent a good part of 1990 in a tiny Manhattan studio working on the album, to which he gave the working title ...Nothing Lasts (ellipsis included), an undisguised reference to what he’d been through. Jammed into the room were the players who would help define his sound and contribute to subsequent albums and tours, among them, drummer Ric Menck, guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine (who’d made their initial appearances on Earth), multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz, and drummer/producer Fred Maher. In terms of his own responsibilities, he continued in the role of full-time bassist and rhythm guitarist, and for the first time he sang and multi-tracked the distinctive, often elaborate backing vocals.
From the Revolver-esque opening notes of the metaphysical musing "Divine Intervention" through the chimy ode to new love "I’ve Been Waiting" and the infectious, seemingly innocent "Girlfriend" - whose final line, "And I’m never gonna set you free," reveals its creepy undercurrent - the potent combo of songs and sounds Sweet and Co. had concocted was something special indeed. But the albums emotional depths are most poignantly plumbed in the pedal steel-stoked lament "You Don’t Love Me," which is as direct as it’s title and completely free of irony. Apart from John Lennon and Neil Young, I don’t know of any artist capable of accessing an emotion without some degree of equivocation.
It may seem baffling in retrospect, considering Girlfriend’s present status as a consensus ‘90s classic, but neither A&M nor any other major label had nay interest in putting out the record. If start-up label Zoo Entertainment hadn’t made an eleventh-hour offer, Sweet might have become another of those worthy artists shut out by the indifference of the music business. But Girlfriend did come out (in October, 1991), the critics wrote the raves, the title song became a hit, three-quarters of a million people bought the album and Sweet had not only come of age as an artist but parlayed his maturation into a career.
You would expect that the break through of Girlfriend would cause Sweet to either play it safe by attempting to either replicate the key elements of the successful album on the follow-up project or write from the newfound sense of well being. Instead, the songs coming from the always-prolific writer suggested that he was tormented by intimations of mortality and the foreboding of some vicious twist of fate - what author John Irving referred to in The World According to Garp as the "undertoad obliterating his hard-earned comfort zone."
The abrupt segue from Girlfriend to Altered Beast paralleled that of Fleetwood Mac’s move from the accessible Rumours to the idiosyncratic Tusk; it wasn’t mere coincidence that Sweet chose Fleetwood Mac veteran Richard Dashut to co-produce. The resulting work though, had more in common with the hazy vistas and withering fusillades of the Neil Young and Crazy Horse masterpiece Zuma.
In the dark hearts of "Devil With The Green Eyes" and "The Ugly Truth," the album’s linchpin songs, lurks the fear of hurtling out of control toward some heinous end; the universe may be godless, the narrator intimates, but it’s far from benign. Deep, possibly terminal longing is fitted with a visceral metaphor in the gut-wrenching "Someone To Pull The Trigger," while "Time Capsule," rather than mourning a failed relationship simply buries it. Not exactly can’t-miss themes for the masses, but powerful stuff - it’s no wonder so many hard-core fans consider Altered Beast Sweet’s strongest album.
The seeds of 100% Fun were sewn in 1994 when Sweet’s Atlanta-based manager, Russell Carter, discovered that Matthew’s name was at the top of the wish list of his neighbor, famed producer, Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots). The multi-track tapes of "Devil With The Green Eyes" were shipped to Atlantic and O’Brien’s remix (which appeared on the EP Son of Altered Beast) evidenced a natural affinity for Sweet’s hooky, layered music. The artist and producer immediately decided to make an album together. O’Briens fast-paced, no-nonsense approach to recording energized the 100% Fun sessions and brought a crisp dynamic to even the most introspective songs. This spirit was most evident on the hit single "Sick Of Myself," which meshes self-loathing and exhilaration as if these opposing emotions were meant for each other. The clattering, thrice-repeated coda, which happened spontaneously while the tape rolled, crystallized the charmingly boyish spirit of the Sweet – O’Brien collaboration. At the other extreme, in its unguarded sense of wonder and possible narcissistic undercurrent, the Byrdsy “We’re The Same” was quintessential Sweet, as his writerly instincts once again led him to an unexpected, fascinating subtext.
For Blue Sky On Mars (1997), Sweet reunited with O’Brien but chose to pare down the line-up of musicians he’d been recording with since Earth - the two of them played nearly all the parts other than the drum tracks. As a consequence, the album is the most hermetically sealed and arrangement-oriented of his ‘90s work, but there are numerous sublime touches in these heady concoctions - you can sense these two studio rats challenging each other with cool licks and ideas as they constructed the tracks. Powered by an analog synth line, "Where You Get Love" delights in the ebullient manner of the first Cars album, the four-square confessional "Behind The Smile" suddenly opens up into a glorious middle eight (one of Sweet’s specialties), and the dusky “Until You Break" makes use of a nearly ambient drum loop to italicize its sense of intimacy.
The recording of In Reverse in 1999 followed a year-long hiatus for Sweet from the rigors of conducting his career while his label, now called Volcano, was changing hands to its present ownership. During this time, Matthew obsessively penned and demoed more than 150 songs - his form of tinkering around the house - while walking the hills surrounding his home above Hollywood, going to the movies every day or two, collecting the paintings of Margaret Keane and other big-eyed artists and generally leading a life of domestic tranquility.
The natural environment around him and the unstressed orderliness of his life at the time inspired Sweet’s approach to the recording project. He chose to commute to work at a venerable Hollywood studio now called Cello (where the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds) and to make use of it’s acoustic echo chambers for a big, open, naturally created sound. He also brought in people he was comfortable with, including the production triumvirate of Maher, Leisz and easygoing record/mixer Jim Scott (Tom Petty, Wilco, Whiskeytown).
Four of the tracks on the sprawling, aurally adventurous album - including "If Time Permits" - were recorded live in a contemporary re-creation of a classic Phil Spector "wall of sound" session, with 15 musicians participating. Amid the wide-screen sound-scape, "If Time Permits" concisely wraps together all of Sweet’s Big Themes - mortality, fate, guilt-and-blame, beginnings-and-endings and the male-female dialogue. The jangly "What Matters" offers sage advice to the lovelorn from a scarred veteran who’s earned his Purple Heart. And the narrator of "Hide," one of Sweet’s loveliest ballads, vacillates between bitterness and disbelief ("Before I knew I had you, you were gone").
Sweet returned to Cello with Maher to cut the two newly written songs that close this anthology. "Ready," presented as a T-Rex- like stomp, overtly describes the first-time, backseat thrill of young love as it covertly yearns for the lost innocence that enables one of the lovers to proclaim that "time stops for tonight and we’re right to believe." There’s a related but deeper duality in "So Far" (a thematic sequel to "What Matters"), whose chorus "I love you so far/I love you today/That’s all that matters/time is running away" comes off as oddly noncommittal at first listen. As the track’s swirling textures come into focus, however, the melodic and lyrical detail reveals a far deeper message; that if the past is gone and the future offers only one final certainty, our only recourse is to hold on for dear life to right now.