New York Times, November 6, 1999
By Jon Pareles
Matthew Sweet's songs know their limits and chafe against them. On Tuesday night he played one tuneful, concise, four-minute song after another. Their style was limited to 1960's approaches, primarily folk-rock, Merseybeat and the Beach Boys; their topic, with few exceptions, was troubled romance. Those are the strictures of power pop, but Mr. Sweet doesn't let himself turn into a complacent pop archivist.
His lyrics are ruthless about his liaisons and himself: ''Beware my love,'' he sang, ''You don't deserve to be abused.'' From past albums, he chose songs about betrayal and self-doubt: ''Sick of Myself,'' ''The Ugly Truth.'' He doesn't expect sympathy; he knows he keeps making mistakes that other people pay for.
Mr. Sweet's new album, In Reverse (Volcano/Zomba), obsesses over the irreversibility of time. Time leaves him stranded between centuries in ''Millennium Blues''; it takes away second chances in ''If Time Permits.'' Yet time has been kind to Mr. Sweet's music; folk-rock, the core of his songs, remains durable.
Where most power pop sets out to be clean-cut, Mr. Sweet prefers to pile on guitar noise. Onstage, he made the songs more uneasy than their studio versions. His voice had a weary roughness; his band mixed the resonance of Rickenbacker guitars with swaths of distortion. Pete Phillips's psychedelic-tinged guitar solos scampered into unexpected corners.
Chicago Sun-Times, November 9, 1999
By Anders Smith-Lindall
What's in a name? In the case of Matthew Sweet's new album, In Reverse,
maybe it's to serve notice to fans that Sweet's returned to the form that
produced two truly great rock records in 1991's Girlfriend and 1995's
100% Fun, as opposed to that of 1997's incoherent bomb Blue Sky
on Mars.
That was certainly true of Sweet's performance Monday at Schubas Tavern.
For one night at least, this was the hottest ticket in town. Sweet usually
plays far larger venues than the intimate Schubas, and tickets sold out--almost
instantly--when they went on sale weeks earlier. Sweet didn't disappoint
the fortunate faithful in attendance.
The set's strength was something of a pleasant surprise, given that Sweet's
best records - including In Reverse - are
carefully crafted products of the studio. The new album is particularly
rich in synthesizers, horns, keyboards, and layers upon layers of Sweet's
swooping, swooning vocals.
Onstage at Schubas, however, Sweet dished up generous portions of straight-up,
stripped-down guitar rock. In this
setting, a handful of the new songs faltered at first, with Sweet's vocals
wavering during the set-opening trio of "Millennium Blues," "If
Time Permits," and "Beware My Love."
The fresh material fared better later, following a mood swing spurred by
a version of "Divine Intervention" so strong and
self-assured that the rest of the set could've coasted home in its wake.
Sweet played the likes of "Girlfriend," the set-closing "Sick
of Myself," and the encore "We're the Same" with just as
much verve - and why not? These aren't only his signature tunes but modern
pop classics.
Sweet has plenty of critics who say he's easily pigeonholed and seems doomed
to keep making the same album over and over
again. And certainly the content of his songs is predictable, confined to
surveying the terrain of romantic relationships. But
he neatly balances little-boy-blue ballads and rocking (self-) recriminations
about such affairs gone wrong with wide-eyed wonder about when they go right.
And with lines like "Hold me, love me/Tie me up and drug me,"
Sweet's no simpleton sensitive-guy.
"You've looked for something greater than this/I promise you it doesn't
exist," Sweet sang in the new ballad "Trade
Places." He might as well have been explaining his adherence to a formula
that's tried and true, as if further justification were needed.
Kill the Lights
The Big Review Of The Big Show With Big Pete
Quite possibly the most satisfying part of attending a big show is when you can do it in VIP style. With a very shirttail association with Matthew Sweet ( I know his cousin and sister-in-law), I slapped my all access pass on my chest and experienced the Nov. 15th show at The Crocodile. Perched up in the crow's nest above the enthusiastic Monday night crowd with a cold beer in my hand, this show had the making of a at least a 4 out of 5 stars review before the music even started. The mood was set-up with the pre-show tape consisting of choice Raspberries and Big Star hits as if to warn the uninitiated that this night was to be all about melodic guitar-pop.
The six piece Matthew Sweet band hit the stage with total ease and control. They helped make the crowded audience feel like kindred spirits with the band because they basically recreated that shoulder to shoulder feeling onstage on the smallish Crocodile stage. Matt kicked it off with the first three songs off his new album, In Reverse. Matt seemed appreciative and a little surprised with the enthusiastic capacity Monday night turnout.
There was something for anyone who is a fan of Matthew Sweet and his brand of melodic pop. Mixing in the old hits like "Divine Intervention," "Girlfriend," "Come to California," "Evangeline," "Time Capsule," "We're The Same," and the raucous "Sick of Myself" with great new songs like "Millennium Blues" (complete with trumpet!), "What Matters," and "Faith In You," no one left disappointed.
The band rocked hard and brought an energetic live feel to the songs that on record can sometimes sound a bit overproduced and lightweight. Rick Menck (drums), and Tony Marisco (bass) provided a solid , punchy foundation so the melodies and harmonies could really shine. New guitarist Pete Phillips kept true to the spirit of the distorted abandon lead guitar style found in Matt's recorded works by previous guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine. I can't say enough about the performance. It basically renewed my faith in how great this kind of music can be when played live by such accomplished and committed players. Go out and buy In Reverse, or any of his previous releases. Matthew Sweet is the real deal.
Big Pete's Big Show Big Rating System gives Matthew Sweet Five Big Stars. Best show of '99? Stay tuned for the Big '99 Top 10 Big Shows...
Launch.com, November 18, 2000
By Don Waller
Indelible melodies, three-part harmonies, and guitars, guitars, guitars. That was Matthew Sweet, leading his six-man electrical band through a nearly two-hour showcase for his toppermost of the poppermost talents at the Troubadour in West Hollywood on Nov. 18.
Performing before a packed house, Sweet certainly came out shooting from the hip, firing straight though the first three songs found on his fine new In Reverse album, which he wound up playing almost in its entirety. Immeasurably aided 'n' abetted by drummer extraordinaire Ric Menck and guitarist Paul Chastain of Velvet Crush fame, lead guitarist Pete Phillips, longtime bassist Tony Marisco, and keyboardist Buck Johnson, the boyish singer-songwriter-guitarist seasoned the set with choice selections from his four previous LPs: Girlfriend, 100% Fun, Altered Beast, and Blue Sky On Mars. "Ugly Truth," "I've Been Waiting," "Someone To Pull The Trigger," all the usual suspects.
Although the transformation of "Come To California" into a truly Move-ing experience and the series of false endings that built to the thighs-quivering climax of "Sick Of Myself" provided the bestest 'n' brightest highlights of the night, perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the evening was that the supple-voiced Sweet never once stooped so low as to do somebody else's material. No crowd-pleasing warhorses. No cult jams. No Big Star-Beatles-and-the-Raspberries, man, in 1999.
After all, Sweet concocts what green-teethed record geeks like to call "powerpop" at its finest, all slap 'n' tickle lyrics, old-fashioned songcraft, and an encyclopediac command of the tonal possibilities inherent in a sea of six-string razors. (Sorry, lost track of all the onstage guitar combinations, due to lack of fingers.)
"It was like a really good party where they just kept playing one great song after another and you didn't want to leave," said one enraptured female fan as she made her way out the door.
Need we say more?
Sonicnet, November 20, 1999
Singer/songwriter gives feel-good treatment to love-gone-sour songs
By Jennifer Elks, Contributing Editor
SAN FRANCISCO. Singer/songwriter Matthew Sweet treated a near-capacity
Slim's crowd Wednesday to the dichotomy of Matthew Sweet: feel-good guitar
pop with melancholy lyrics about rejection and love gone sour.
On the next-to-last date of a brief U.S. trek behind the October release
of his seventh album, In Reverse, Sweet and his band plowed through
24 songs in 90 minutes.
Without a word, Sweet and company - keyboardist Buck Johnson, bassist
Tony Marsico, acoustic guitarist Paul Chastain, lead guitarist Peter Phillips
and drummer Rick Menck - kicked off the energetic set with the first three
songs from In Reverse: "Millennium Blues," "If Time
Permits," and "Beware My Love."
Then they acknowledged the crowd's craving for some older work with "Divine
Intervention," from Girlfriend (1991), and "Time Capsule"
from Altered Beast (1993). The latter illustrated Sweet's penchant
for spinning musical tales of heartbreak: "Then - we were young and
strong/ Now - everything is wrong."
Thus began the evening's emotional roller coaster. Whether lighthearted
power-pop ditties or somber ballads, most of the songs in Sweet's repertoire
examine doomed relationships, such as the one recounted in the doleful ballad
"Hide": "Before I knew I had you, you were gone," Sweet
sang.
The melodies on In Reverse are less aggressive, poppier and, well,
sweeter, than those on his previous albums. But in performance, the new
tracks had just as much punch as the three-minute rockers he's known for.
Wearing a brown, long-sleeved, button-down shirt and brown pants, the
35-year-old singer leaned so close to the mic that he often rested his nose
on top of it.
As Sweet sat down at the piano for "Hide," a fan shouted for "Ultrasuede,"
an outtake from 1994's Son of Altered Beast. Sweet laughed and said,
" 'Ultrasuede'? Not quite the right instrument for that. We'll learn
to play it one of these days."
Regarding the boisterous romp "Come to California," from Blue
Sky on Mars (1997), Sweet said, "We've played this song the last
six nights in a row. I don't know if they hate us for this or not."
During the band's rendition of the song, which was faster and more energetic
than the recorded version, Johnson hammered away on the piano and Sweet
grinned fiendishly through his sweaty mop of shaggy, chin-length hair as
he, Marsico, Chastain and Phillips bounced in unison.
Then, to the crowd's delight, Sweet and friends blasted through his 1991
breakthrough hit, "Girlfriend," which was faster and punkier than
the original.
Though two women kept screaming, "We love you, Matthew!" and fans
whooped and applauded loudly throughout, the audience's reception of the
newer material was lukewarm compared to the more enthusiastic response to
older songs.
The mood quieted with "Someone to Pull the Trigger," anchored
by the line "Everything I'll ever be, I've been." But "Sick
of Myself," from 100% Fun (1995), with its four false endings,
got the crowd bouncing and dancing again.
The sounds of thunder and rain filled the room as the lead-in to the epic,
9 1/2-minute In Reverse closer, "Thunderstorm," which seemed
to be three songs in one. It was an uncharacteristically optimistic take
on the end of a relationship, with
Sweet crooning, "Nothing is wrong when it rains, even from my eyes."
The upbeat tempo of the second encore, "Faith in You," kept the
mood light, until Sweet stopped at the end to scold some unruly fans. "Peace
and love, OK? Or just go," he said, exasperated. "Why do we have
to have violence every night during this encore? It's that f---ing song."
The punchy "Evangeline" ended the set on a high note.
"The band was so tight," San Francisco concert-goer Andi Von Sternberg,
27, raved. "Everything just kicked ass."