In Reverse, Matthew Sweet's audacious new album, marks the culmination of a decade of memorable recordings which began in 1991 with the much-praised and -loved Girlfriend, Sweet's commercial breakthrough and artistic coming of age. During a period in which it seemed that virtually every aspiring rocker sought to emulate the Seattle grunge scene, Sweet steadfastly followed his own vision, intuitively activated, irresistibly melodic, achingly honest, and aurally adventurous.
True to that vision, the four quintessential tracks of In Reverse were recorded live during a two-day period in Studio 2 at L.A.'s venerable Cello Studios (known as United Western in the '60s). In an experiment partly inspired by the Phil Spector wall-of-sound approach, Sweet had amassed a small army of musicians: two electric guitarists, three on acoustics, two bassists, three keyboardists, a theremin player, a pair of drummers, two percussionists, and two horn players. Among them were legendary bass player Carol Kaye, who'd played on Pet Sounds and countless other '60s and '70s classics; Sweet stalwarts Ric Menck and Fred Maher on the dual drum kits, Tony Marsico on stand-up bass and new addition Pete Phillips on electric guitar; theremin player Pamelia Kurstin; and the Fowler brothers, Bruce and Walt, on trombone and trumpet, respectively.
Jim Scott, one of the project's hand-picked trio of co-producers, was stationed at the board in the control room. On the other side of the glass were his production collaborators, the above-mentioned Maher seated at his kit and Greg Leisz on acoustic guitar, while Sweet moved between piano and electric guitar depending on the track. The 17 players were positioned and miked by Scott, the arrangements were worked out, the cavernous acoustic echo chamber was patched in, the principals crossed their fingers, and the band let it rip.
The resulting songs, "If Time Permits," "I Should Never Have Let You Know," "Worse to Live" and the epic nine-and-a-half-minute finale, "Thunderstorm," are unlike anything you've heard before, although they may well cause you to remember what it felt like to experience "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" or "Be My Baby" for the first time - or "Whole Lotta Love," for that matter. But it's 1999, at the tail end of the Dry Decade (a trend Sweet himself helped to initiate with the seminal Girlfriend) and this music - huge, human and dripping with reverb - sounds downright radical now.
What follows is a conversation with Sweet about the making of In Reverse, and about the motives, processes, frustrations, and ambitions of this unusual songwriter/artist.
What inspired you to go for this big, wet sound? Was it the music you were listening to or a conscious or unconscious reaction to the sounds of the last four or five records you made?
My feelings were just basic. I wanted it to be really big and real, sort of psychedelic in an organic way, like plants growing in those stop-action films -natural and exotic.
At the time that we put out Girlfriend, everything had a lot of reverbs and delays on it. Generally it was kind of oddball and unfashionable to make something really dry. Over the last few years it's become more and more that way, a lot of things use the very dry impact as their attack. I'd often thought about making a record someday just covered in reverb. It would be daring because it's so uncommon. With this record, I went into not being afraid to pile on the reverb. It's been done both ways, so it's not a ground-breaking thing to claim that I put reverb on my record. I just don't think people realize how much they've gotten away from it.
So I thought I'd try to do some songs that were really musical and ballad-y and attempt to create that kind of drama like the Spector records, that vibe they used to get - really organic and free. After the age of drum machines and so much being programmed, the impact of live humans screwing up really is largely forgotten in a lot ways. And the way it works with a large group of people that are fallible human beings is also a cool, unique thing.
The beauty of it is that it's live, so when you hear it back, it's pretty impressive. Especially when you have such a large group - everyone is experiencing that. It's like this giant band and you're all excited about this thing you played.
So you knew the kind of record you wanted to make and then you had to figure out the team that was going to allow you to make it in an optimum way. How did you pick the team?
The germ of this idea began early in 1998 when I was thinking about who I was going to work with and putting together a team of all my favorite people that do certain things. I thought, "Who would I get if sky was the limit?" So I came up with three people: Jim Scott, an amazing engineer I've wanted to work with since I first heard Tom Petty's "Mary Jane's Last Dance"; my friend Fred Maher, who I haven't worked with since Girlfriend; and Greg Leisz, who's really deep musically and has played on a bunch of my records.
I felt really comfortable around all of these guys, and everyone wanted to hold up their end for the rest of the team. At first everyone was a little scared about it: "Is it going to be too many cooks in the kitchen?" But I think because I had such a strong idea of what I wanted to do, it kind of carried the whole thing along. I just went in and went "All right, let's go!" And when I was unsure about things I leaned on everybody.
It was a real family vibe. We were excited about it and thought it was cool. That made for some of the most fun sessions I've ever had making a record. The stuff sounded so great, and there were a lot of people to share it with.
Considering this studio supergroup you assembled for the big numbers, the coolest move was bringing in the great Carol Kaye.
I learned to play bass from a Carol Kaye bass-method book, so for me it was really exciting. She's also an amazing jazz musician, so her approach to bass playing is really integrated with jazz, rock, with Motown - pretty stunning and daring. She did some pretty radical stuff. It gives a lot of interesting flavor to the record, like the opening of "Thunderstorm" - it's almost as if her bass is the thunder in the beginning instrumental part of it.
To see Carol listen to stuff and get all emotional and say, "I never thought I'd hear that sound again," was a good barometer for us. Not that we were obsessed by it sounding just like Spector. We didn't use strings or horns in general. It's not an orchestral sound, like Pet Sounds. It's much simpler than that - a little more brutal - a few pianos, a few acoustic guitars, a few electric guitars. Although the pianos might actually be a piano, an organ and a harpsichord, they're mostly playing the same thing.
Your creative process is primarily intuitive in the sense that you come up with the songs first and then you recognize the connections between them. That said, the most dramatic manifestation of this approach that you've ever put on a record has to be "Thunderstorm," which weaves together four distinct songs into a remarkably coherent opus. Did you have an epiphany that caused you to see the four songs as one?
We were narrowing down the demos and it got down to 16, 20 songs and there were these few songs that were hovering in there, among the favorites of a couple of us, but not really making the topnotch grade - "Day in the Sun," "Even From My Eyes," "Hole in the Clouds," and "Thunderstorm." I sat down one day, saw they were all about the same thing. Then I started playing through them and they were all in the same key. We put it together and it worked. It was pre-built that way - by accident.
You know, something happened to me once I was home for a while, off the road and nearly human again. I started thinking about life and the universe and really getting into nature and being a part of it, just identifying with nature. "Thunderstorm" is a song that uses that metaphor big time. It's like: I don't care, I'll just keep going. You're screwed in your life, it's unpleasant, but you move forward and try to get through it. That song always meant something to me in a personal way. I realize that a rain-theme metaphor is kind of simplistic. But it was meant with such love, and it's weird to me how little that became an issue later on. Everybody seems to like it - people get into the long song.
Being in your home environment here in the hills during this period, nature was necessarily a physical reality for you.
Yeah, and I've been outdoors a lot, I've been hiking and doing a lot of outdoor activity, breathing and feeling the air and the sun. And that's a great thing. That's I guess what I mean about saying that for me, that's what God is: it's nature and realizing you're part of it, and that it's precious and fleeting. And I don't know, if you're ever gonna feel like you've found something out, that's the most important thing I've found out, as something to go to.... But I don't know what the hell that has to do with my record [laughs].
Your records are as much about the sound of them as their substance, and the kinds of emotional reactions those sounds affect.
What it feels like was really important with this record. For me, some of it's hard to listen to because Jim made it sound so great and when I'm listening to it and remember the way I felt...it's upsetting. It touches close to things that are upsetting to me personally. That makes me think I really got to something close to home in myself. So whatever anyone else feels from it, to me it's a really important record emotionally.
Did you have your ups and downs emotionally through this relatively tranquil period when you were writing these songs?
Yes, because I didn't know when I'd make a record again or for whom. Maybe more than anything it was because I had the time to just be home and be me and feel like me in my life, instead of the guy going out being this person who never quite is what everybody wishes he was. The last year or two I've had some of the happiest times in my life and some of the scariest realizations.
Part of the reason I call it "Matthew Sweet In Reverse" is the psychedelic aspect of things being backwards. Technically, backwards sounds were the main way of getting psychedelic without it being necessarily tricky. It's not like using a synthesizer sound to make a weird vibe. It's like a vine growing through the music.
I also was thinking about life and how it's divided in a way. Once you learn everything then you begin the process of trying to go back to how you felt in the beginning. There are so many places on the record where that was in effect, like the song "Millennium Blues," which is about my life being half over right at the millennium - living half in one and half in the other - like this mirror of my life sandwiched between these two times. This theme is also touched on in "Day in the Sun": being passed by this thing moving so much faster than you, like life and time, how quickly it all goes.
I wanted the record to have that Alice in Wonderland trippy quality, like being pulled back through all your experiences and emotions in a way that is sort of disorienting and maybe would catch you off-guard. I hope it has that quality where suddenly you're in a very serious place and you don't know how you got there, but it's really intense. Then maybe there's some relief and you go to another place.
Also there was a tinge of me becoming a normal person again - could be me in reverse. Somehow I make it back to the time before I was ruined by everything that happened. Probably that's universal. I imagine most people at some point feel that: "How do I get back?"
I had a sense of wanting this to be my millennium record. But I didn't make a song called "Millennium Blues" specifically to go on it. If anything, I wish it didn't have to be called that, but it's important because it's about the time we live in and about the time this record's happening for me. Maybe for myself I was unconsciously doing that - encapsulating everything and putting a bookend to this time. I'm a bit of a veteran now; I've been around. I can see what's happening in life, and I don't have any illusions.
The sense I get from this record is that, from the point of view of personal history, it does provide a bookend for you - the other being Girlfriend, which came out of a parallel period of reflection and uncertainty. The two records, although they don't sound anything alike, both have a big emotional payoff, both seem quite real. The one established you in a pretty startling and dramatic way, and the other, I believe, is going to allow the people who followed you for the last 10 years to have a sense of culmination.
We were afraid that, because Fred [Maher, who co-produced Girlfriend] was involved, everyone would think it's supposed to be Girlfriend 2. And in a weird way it did turn out like that. But not because Fred was involved; it was more like you were saying, because of the circumstances of how I was feeling when I wrote the stuff. And I was reaching to say something to myself about the way I felt about certain things. It's a lot like Altered Beast as well in the daring aspect of its sound and the really direct nature of the songs.
You certainly seem reinvigorated, and this album is dramatic evidence of that.
After Blue Sky, some people were telling me, "Make a more musical, adult record." Then I felt like everything shifted, and nobody wanted that: "That's the last thing you should do - make a bunch of rock singles." For me it doesn't matter anyway. I mean, all that stuff is just something I hear, because I go and just write a bunch of songs; it has nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be writing or not. If I could write all the things I'm supposed to write, I'd be rich.
But only if the people saying those things to you over the years were right.
Look, if I knew a way I could magically be more successful, I'd do it [laughs]. I'm not proud. But I don't see anything I could do that would make my music better or more commercial than making it as good as I can for what it is on its own terms. So that's what I do, and I don't feel a lot of conflict about it, really. In the end, I didn't have to make any choice about the kind of record to make, because the songs that came to the top on everybody's lists were the same songs.
And there were 150 to choose from?
There were a lot [laughs], and people just gravitated toward certain things. It was pleasing to see that some of the Spectorish things still made it to the top, because it meant I'd get to do that experiment.
You're an anomaly, especially in the '90s. You've made defiantly non-commercial records by the standards of the era that have actually sold pretty well. You have the makings of a career that parallels Neil Young's, in that you've been successful enough that people have wanted to keep letting you make records, but not so successful that they've dictated the kinds of records that they wanted you to make based on some prior mega-success. So, as a result, the lack of that kind of pressure that affects both bigger artists and aspiring artists has allowed you to make a body of work in the '90s that's free of those kinds of concerns. It's about other concerns that have more to do with reality and life. That's why some people venerate those records - those couple hundred-thousand people who know who you are and will go out and buy your next record no matter what.
It's hard for me to come to terms with the idea of having fans at all. When I'm left on my own I'm convinced that they don't even exist. But I don't want to thumb my nose at it; it's something I want to do better at. When I made this record, I really thought, "I hope they like it" - which is a weird thing to be thinking. But I think it was because I got excited about it. I thought, "I'm really into it - maybe they'll really like it."
Because of the way you operate as an artist - and to a certain extent it's a function of your sealing yourself off from the world part of the time - what you express allows people to identify with it. Whereas if you seriously got off on being a rock star, you'd be thinking so much about the relationship between you and the fans -
In general it seems wrong to me for anybody to stand up there and be that. It's such a weird kind of lie for the people. But I couldn't see how I'd do my thing otherwise. To get to go into the studio and make records, you've gotta be that guy, sort of. And it seemed worse to me to be all pretentious about it and not accept that it was me. Because what I do isn't vague, it's really personal, it's sentences and they're saying things. So I didn't feel like I could be, like, my name was a color, or something like that [laughs].
The difference between your record and the records that a lot of people are making now is this one has no resemblance to a piece of product, to something that is made to be marketed. It's real. I think that can be said about all of your records to a certain degree, and the people who get you embrace that level of reality and veracity. Not being a brand name, being this guy people feel they know, is...special, it's unusual.
If it's unusual, that's great, but I still have to get out there and fight each time to keep it up, or get it back up [laughs], or whatever. It's a fight every time to mean something and hope someone notices. All I can really do is do the music and try to be me.
The success you've had depends on your being yourself. That's the tricky part.
Maybe that's what I mean by In Reverse: like going back to being me. Even though I never really stopped being me, I still have to think that way. I have to say to myself, "Be you."
Well, this other guy isn't not you, it's just a protective device, like a wet suit. It's still recognizably you, but it insulates you a little bit.
I feel like most of the stuff I've done in promoting myself or being a performer is kind of...sheepish. It's not like I'm going out there 'cause I want to be Ricky Martin. I have no desire or need for that. I've learned along the way how great it can feel to have an audience and be playing a show and feel like you've communicated something. I don't mind thinking about feeling that again - I want to go out and play to get that connection.
In a way some of the things that I've been forced to do that were awkward for me, maybe it was good for me. I try to think like that. Of course I'm gonna hate doing half the stuff they want me to do, you know? It should be that way. When I start liking it, I should worry [laughs].