By Paul Evans
Fifties starlet Tuesday Weld graces the cover of Matthew Sweet's irresistible third album; inside, the fresh-voiced singer serenades such other fantasy femmes as Winona Ryder and underground-comics star Evangeline. And with virtually all of its fifteen tunes offering joyous or yearning or bittersweet statements about romance, Girlfriend is the breathless testimony of a fool for love.
But Sweet is one sharp fool. While quivering at times like a teenager gripped by a fearsome crush, he's actually a knowing lover - the spirit of his songs suggests a grown-up Everly Brothers, straining still to be starry-eyed but savvy enough to have survived love's disenchantments. "The secret on your lips/That nobody knows/Gentle in your eyes/You can wear my clothes," Sweet sings on "I've Been Waiting," as he plays the role of desperate courtier; in "Thought I Knew You," his more jaded self undercuts the gushing - "I thought I knew you/But I wasn't even close/I had my heart set/On little more than a ghost."
Musically, Sweet is equally adept at balancing the tough and the tender. With a lineup featuring ace guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, this is an ad hoc band that manages to recall the crunch of Crazy Horse, as well as the sonic gorgeousness of Revolver-period Beatles. Lloyd Cole guest stars, Fred Maher and Ric Menck alternate on drums, and Greg Leisz on pedal steel is Girlfriend's secret weapon. But Sweet himself, handling guitar, bass and all vocals, is the record's most engaging force - and as a writer, he's a one-man factory of hooks.
Warmer and stronger than his two previous solo albums, Girlfriend should, with any justice, be Sweet's breakthrough. This is popcraft raised to the level of artistry - a rock & roll valentine that delivers subtle wisdom with an exhilarating kick.
The Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star, Preview Reviews, Friday, November 1, 1991
By Craig Shapiro, VP/LS
It's heady times for pure pop - quality and quantity. Chris Starney and Pete Holsapple recorded again. The Posies made a big debut last year, the Odds this eyar. Then there's the Katydids, the La's and the Trash Can Sinatras.
And Matthew Sweet. Girlfriend is his third release, and after soaking up its infectious hooks, guitar-driven melodies and achingly personal lyrics - all indicative of good pop - it may be the one that gets him the audience he deserves.
Sweet does just about everything but cater. He writes, he produces, he sings, he plays piano, bass and rhythm and lead guitar. He was going through a divorce when he was writing Girlfriend, and the titles you this is familiar terrain - "You Don't Love Me," "I Wanted to Tell You" and "Nothing Lasts." But Sweet's emotive, plaintive voice makes it sound so genuine. The same holds true when he brings up larger questions - death on "Don't Go," faith on "Divine Intervention" an "Holy War."
That's not to say this is a one-man show. Greg Leisz, who plays pedal steel for k.d. lang, adds mournful touches, Robert Quine applies his taut guitar and Lloyd Cole (Sweet plays his post-Commotions projects) makes several notable contributions, particularly on the bitter "Though I Knew You."
Intelligent, accessible and carefully crafted, Girlfriend is pop at its best.
New York Newsday, Sunday, November 3, 1991
By John Anderson, Staff Writer
The picture of Tuesday Weld, circa 1957, that graces the cover of Matthew Sweet's new album Girlfriend (Zoo Entertainment) is just slightly less captivating than the songs within. The photo's not merely good marketing, though. It's symbolic, considering that the love Sweet sings about is just slightly less unattainable than the Weld of 30-odd years ago.
Sweet apparently wrote the album while in the middle of both divorce proceedings and his first romance since the marital breakup. And there's a pronounced ambiguity in the lyrics, a mix of distrust and desparate longing, hopelessness and hope. There's anger in "Does She Talk?" ("'cause man you can't teach a slithering snake how to walk"), an ache in "Winona" ("Could you be my little movie star?/Could you be my long lost girl?"). Don't try this at home, but domestic suffering seems to have worked for Sweet.
A member of the early '80s Athens, Ga., school (as a member of Oh-OK and Buzz of Delight), Sweet is still finding new angles in the jangle. He's an unregenerate melodist of no mean talent, but the melange of guitar textures he uses not only cuts the sweetness in his songs, it gives them bite. The sound of Girlfriend is often reminiscent of old Neil Young, or perhaps a combination of old and new Neil Young. Richard Lloyd (formerly of Television) and Robert Quine smear anarchic leads across Sweet's and Lloyd Cole's acoustic tapestry.
Sometimes, of course, you gotta let yourself go: "I've Been Waiting," at first go perhaps the most listener-friendly track on the album, is as harmony-heavy and engaging as any old Beatles or Byrds record. But then comes the title track, on which Quine supplies needle-peaking lead lines, and then "Looking at the Sun" and its accompanying pain.
Despite his affection for '60s-ish pop-rock, Sweet knows better than to let it get the better of him. Girlfriend is a perfect balance of wisdom and abandon, playfulness and power chords. All this and Tuesday, too.
Interview Magazine, December 1991
By D.E.
The opening chords of Matthew Sweet's new album, Girlfriend (Zoo Entertainment), crunch with a Bachman-Turner Overdrive power. Sweet's boyish vocal harmonies fall somewhere between Rubber Soul and barbershop quartet, but vocalizing isn't what this album is about. The choruses say what they have to say, then make way for the wiry guitar statements of Robert Quine, who manhandles his instrument the way he did when he worked with Richard Hell and the Voidoids and with Lou Reed: for the sheer physical pleasure of it.
Texas Beat, December 1991
By Paras
The new album by Matthew Sweet is gritty, fresh, and urgent. It rocks solid, yet shines with intelligent lyrics and delicious pop melodies. Girlfriend features a wonderful cast of players: Lloyd Cole, Robert Quine, and Richard Lloyd on guitar. Rich Mench and Fred Maher, who co-produced, cover the drums.
The last two years have been rough for Sweet. Being dropped from his label and his marriage going to the wind have given Girlfriend an air of immediacy. Not that everything is down; Sweet has found new love and shares this with us. Listening to Girlfriend you immediately fall for the songs on their own merit. Yet images of Beatle-esque harmonies, Neil Young intensity, and Lou Reed's "New York" brashness leave you feeling and understanding what Sweet has lost only to find once more. Major points to Zoo Entertainment for seeing a gem amongst stones. Tell a friend, Girlfriend is a delight.
City Paper, December 6, 1991
By Michael Yockel
So, like, too bad Menck won't be drumming behind Matthew Sweet when he tumbles into Max's on Broadway on Monday, December 9 in support of his remarkable new album, Girlfriend (Zoo), which freely, easily, and craftily mixes bittersweet breakup songs with gleeful gushes about a new g'friend. And while Sweet's pure-pop takes love-o-rama date all the way back to his teenager-in-love days as one-half of The Buzz of Delight in the mid-80s, he permanently solidified his claim to chief chronicler of the cult of the girl - superceding the comatose Wilbury-ized Tom Petty - two years ago on Earth, which includes the ineffably charming "Vixen," "Easy," "Vertigo," and "Wind and the Sun."
Girlfriend dives deeper. Rocks out more convincingly too. Of course, Sweet's M.O. as a career popologist - the choirboy voice, the effortless hooks, the guileless facility with the lexicon of love - accounts for part of Girlfriend's wonderfulness. And yet the album pitches itself into pop-and-fresh indomitability because it's considerably less studied/more in-your-face than Earth, and because Sweet really means what he says and says what he means.
Achingly immediate from start to finish, Girlfriend autobiographically documents both the wrenching end of Sweet's marriage and the brimming hope he's found in a new romance. It opens with the guitar-slashing "Divine Intervention," wherein Sweet establishes not only his postmarital rootless ("I don't know where I'm gonna live/Don't know if I'll find a place"), but also his crisis of faith, openly questioning the capriciousness of God in this topsy-turvy world: "I cannot understand my God/I don't know why it gets to me." And Girlfriend closes with the slow, acoustic "Nothing Lasts" (the album's original working title), which functions as a dolorous bookend to "Divine Intervention." On it, Sweet inevitably deals with the dissolution of his marriage ("It's time to move one/Let the past go") while simultaneously reiterating his celestial dumbfoundedness ("If I could locate/A God above").
In between on Girlfriend's 13 other songs, Sweet swings between puppy uppers and doggy downers: rocking out blissfully on the title cut (I love the lines "Cause you need to/Be back in the arms of a good friend/And I need to/Be back in the arms of a girlfriend"); sending a mopey, twangy c&w valentine to actress Winona Ryder on "Winona"; bluesily wrestling with his together-forever-turns-into-separated status on "Day for Night"; bitterly recalling marital betrayal on the strummy, acoustic-guitars-only (Sweet and Lloyd Cole) "Thought I Knew You"; going into denial swoon over a dead friend (or relationship) on the searing "Don't Go"; and grinding out a winking sexuality on the crunching "Does She Talk?"
Girlfriend convenes the downtown NYC duo that Sweet shares with Lloyd Cole - drummer/co-producer (with Matthew) Fred Maher and guitarist Robert Quine - and collects long-time Sweet co-conspirators Richard Lloyd (he of Television fame) on guitar and, natch, Ric Menck. And Cole whangs guitar on five cuts, repaying Sweet for playing bass on his last two albums. For his part, Sweet plays bass, a plethora of guitars, and piano, while summoning an exaltation of vocals - even edging into CS&N territory on "Looking at the Sun," "Your Sweet Voice," and "I've Been Waiting."
In addition to its utter musical/lyrical winsomeness, Girlfriend cagily salutes both vanishing vinyl - hear the sound of the needle plopping onto an LP at the start of side two's "Day for Night," then listen for that unmistakeable needle-brooding-at-the-end-of-the-record sound after "Your Sweet Voice" - and the ultimate girlfriend, Tuesday Weld (who played the beautiful mercenary Thalia Menninger in '59-'60 on TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) by making her the CD's cover girl.
Absolutely brilliant.
Entertainment Weekly, Friday, Dec. 20, 1991
By Bill Wyman
Girlfriend, Matthew Sweet's third record, is a spare and emotional stunner. By turns passionate and off-hand, regretful and funny, it conveys intimacy even as it plays with guitar noise and studio folderol. Most of the songs consist of little else but Sweet's voice and elegant touches of guitar, bass, and drums, yet loopy bits of technology intrude again and again, from the Beatlesque tape snippets in "Divine Intervention" to the sound of a needle dropping onto an LP at the beginning of "Day for Night." "I've Been Waiting" is fun-filled and rollicking, as Sweet finds love for the strangest reasons ("You can wear my clothes"); the tough "Evangeline" ("Try her on, she fits like a glove") has an appropriately rough guitar riff, courtesy of MVP guitarist Richard Lloyd. Sweet's strikingly consistent songwriting, and the riot of influences he draws on - from Smokey Robinson soul to Fleetwood Mac pop, from Revolver-era feedback to very '90s studio touches - make Girlfriend a masterpiece of spare, postmodern pop. A
Stereo Review, Feb 1992, v57, n2, p122(2)
By Parke Puterbaugh
Of all the cult records of the Seventies, none stands taller than Big Star's Radio City, considered by many to be the Great Lost American Pop Album. What the first Velvet Underground album was to the Sixties-a record that didn't sell many copies but led everyone who bought it to form a band (so the story goes) - Radio City was to the next decade. Matthew Sweet's newly released third album, Girlfriend, is a sterling example of how the influence of Radio City continues to the present day. Girlfriend is not only positively inspired by Radio City but arguably equal to it.
What makes both records so magical is that their pop is pristine without being polished to the point of unreality. Amid a flock of nicely composed songs there's room for spontaneity, small mistakes, and self-expression. There's also a healthy reverence for the purity of the guitars-and-drums tradition from the Beatles onward, and the notion that guitar solos ought to carry the emotion of the song forward or not be there at all. To that end, Sweet has enlisted several of New York City's finest guitarists-Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine, and Lloyd Cole-to play their hearts out.
Girlfriend is a cornucopia of great hooks, solid playing, and winsome, impassioned vocals from Sweet. It begins strongly, if strangely, with "Divine Intervention," a longish song about dislocation ("Don't know where I'm gonna live/Don't know if I'll find a place") whose soul-baring rawness is reminiscent of John Lennon's plaints in "Plastic Ono Band." The next eleven songs make up an uninterrupted streak of good-as-it-gets pop. It's hard to know where to start dispensing praise: I've Been Waiting, with its rainbow of rich harmonies and jubilant twelve-string guitar; "You Don't Love Me," whose crying pedal steel and rustic bounce bring to mind the Neil Young of "Harvest"; the two girls-name songs, "Winona" (as in Ryder) and "Evangeline," respectively importuning and irreverent. The title track is worth cranking up, too, evolving into a hot jam in which guitarist Quine pitches a quirky fit. It all neatly segues, by way of a drum bridge, into the gorgeous, ruminative "Looking at the Sun." Sweet closes the CD with three tracks left over from his last album, including the uncharacteristically spienetic "Does She Talk?" and one of rock's more effective antiwar songs, "Holy War": ". . . I'm not in for killing another man/Defending my Holy Land/ As if there's a God who would understand."
If it gets a fair and public hearing, Girlfriend might finally seduce America into noticing one of its most talented pop musicians. If not, we may just have another cult masterpiece on our hands.
CMJ New Music Report
From his earliest days in Georgia (in bands like Oh-OK and Buzz Of Delight), through two albums on different labels, Matthew Sweet has always exhibited promise but somehow never quite pulled it off; for those who believed in him all along (like himself, for one), this album represents the Big Payback-Girlfriend is perhaps as close as you can get to a definitive pop masterpiece in 1991. What can we possibly say about an album that condenses and combines the poignant wisdom, aching longing and soaringly wistful melodicism of Big Star, Badfinger, Chris Stamey, the sweet side of the Velvets plus a lifetime of listening to Beatles records, and crams them all into fifty wonderful minutes? Let's face it-usually even the best records really only have one or three or four drop-dead sing along melodies, the kind of tunes you hum and hum for days even in your sleep, but on Girlfriend, virtually every hook is crafted so it sticks around-listen to it all, and you'll see just what we mean. Helped out by luminous friends like Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd (lead guitars), drummer/producer Fred Maher and a special guest appearance by Lloyd Cole (at his best on rhythm "chink" guitar), this record is as warm and simple as pop music can get, and it's Matthew Sweet's finest hour. Yet. Top Cuts: "Divine Intervention," "I've Been Waiting," "Girlfriend," "Evangeline" and "Does She Talk?."
Music.com
By John D. Luerssen
Matthew Sweet spent much of the 1980s playing guitar in Oh-OK, before recording a pair of solo records (1986's Inside and 1989's Earth) for two different labels (Epic and A&M, respectively). Although those LPs met with critical acclaim, they were commercial failures. By 1990 the singer/songwriter was playing guitar for Lloyd Cole, leaving fans to wonder when, if ever, he might release another disc. In early 1991, Sweet inked a recording deal with Zoo/Volcano and began recording what would become his brilliant guitar pop album Girlfriend.
On Girlfriend, Sweet received effective help from rock luminaries like former Television guitarist Richard Lloyd, ex-Lou Reed axeman Robert Quine, Ex-Commotions leader Cole, and Velvet Crush drummer Ric Menck. Resuscitating Big Star, The Beatles, Neil Young and the Byrds, the musician and his collective offered a timeless sound, while the superb songwriting lifted the disc to unexpected heights of greatness.
Infectious yet diverse pop styles permeated the Fred Maher-produced album, dominated by themes of love and heartbreak. On the albums title song, Sweet whipped his band into a guitar laden frenzy. "Girlfriend," became a very popular alternative radio hit in early 1992, as sales of the album (it was eventually certified gold by the RIAA in 1995) were aided by MTV exposure of the song's Japanese animation video.
Girlfriend's standout material included the hard rocking, multi-tracked vocals of "Evangeline" and "Divine Intervention." Still, the disc's best moments were the wonderful, mid-tempo romance pop of "Ive Been Waiting," and the gentle tribute to a Gen X movie starlet on the country ballad "Winona." When the album gracefully concluded with the pensive weeper "Your Sweet Voice," listeners knew that they had hit paydirt, with their hands around an essential, invaluable alt-pop album.