Home Recording, May/June 1999
Making Tracks From Scratch With Matthew Sweet
By David Simons
You play every instrument yourself, you write all the songs, and now you've outfitted your home with your own recording studio, complete with everything you'll need to cut your next record all by yourself.
Why go anywhere else?
That's the question crafty multi-instumentalist Matthew Sweet actually asked himself the last time he pieced together a new batch of songs. And in fact, Blue Sky on Mars - his most recent effort - very nearly became a homegrown affair.
That is, until the phone call came from sonic wiz Brendan O'Brien, informing Sweet that the amps were already warming up down at O'Brien's Southern Trax studio - and Sweet was swept up into the Atlanta-based musical candyland, dutifully laying basic tracks.
Still, it was a trip he almost didn't take. Just prior to beginning Blue Sky, Sweet had done some serious home-studio shopping, procuring a pair of Sony PCM-800 (8-track digital multi-track) machines and adding a Yamaha O2/R console in order to digitally interface with the decks.
He didn't stop there, either: Within the past year, the guitarist finally sprung for his long-awaited 24-track Pro Tools system, and recently completed the deal by adding the MIXplus system upgrade. Rounding out Sweet's arsenal is a full signal chain of Tube Tech gear, including mic pre's, a single-channel compressor and program EQ: a pair of '70's-era Neve compressor/limiters and EQ's' plus a full complement of microphones, from his AKG C-12VR reissue to a set of Groove Tubes tube mics (which he likes especially for miking up his Leslie cabinet).
Having compiled "something like 100" new songs in the past year - and having spent a whole year at home ironing out his current record deal - Sweet's been putting his new equipment to the test in a big way, cutting demo after demo in his typically meticulous fashion. But although he's now blessed with total DIY capability, Sweet's next recording project (his "millennium" album, as he's calling it, due to its likely release date) will once again take place within the confine of the big-league studios, now just a stone's throw away from his L.A. home.
Which is not to say that he has any trepidation over his recent audio-shopping spree.
"It would be real tempting to record at home on the Pro Tools, to really craft it, fix what's wrong slowly and over time," says Sweet. "But rest assured, I'll be down at Ocean Way or some other place recording my basic tracks through a Neve on to a 23-track magnetic tape machine! Right now I just wouldn't consider making the foundation of a record on Pro Tools...but I can't say that I never will."
Sweet came of age during the affordable sound-on-sound era, and credits the birth of his entire career to his first portable multitrack. By the time he's landed his first record deal, Sweet had already become an overdub ace. "I could hide out and no one could ever hear what I was doing," says Sweet, "because I was so weird about my stuff in the beginning. So the home studio has always sort of defined my 'thing' for me; it's where I make up everything, and usually my demos are pretty close blueprints to what the records end up being."
And though yesterday's Fostex is today's Pro Tools, the novelty still hasn't worn off.
"I used to get everything into the O2/R as fast as possible," says Sweet, "but the Pro Tools\24 sounds so good to me - and even though it's not better than the O2\R fidelity - I'm just inclined to stay in it and use its mixer right there." Sweet equally enamored of the handful of plug-ins he got for the system, including the Filter Bank, which emulates Neve and other settings. "They won't clip digitally like a normal EQ would in a system like that," notes Sweet. "They've moldeled it to sound like analog, especially when you crank up the input. It really sounds awesome."
While tweaking his computer setup, Sweet discovered that his choice of a flat-panel monitor - one item which has gotten considerably less pricey in recent months - was a particularly good move, especially for tracking guitars. Sweet had found that his conventional 17-inch monitor would actually make his pickups buzz, a problem only rectified by turning away from the screen. "I found that the flat-panel screens have no effect at on a guitar pickup," says Sweet. "It was the greatest moment of my life when I realized I'd finally beaten that problem! Not only that, but you can put big speakers on either side of the screen - I've got my Tannoy powered speakers - and they won't affect it at all. Whereas with a normal screen, it'd be all warped."
A lot of people who've pegged Sweet as a hopeless Beatlemaniac might find it strange to hear how freely he's given in to the digital world. But despite his affection for Vox amps, Epiphone guitars, and Lennon shades, Sweet - like many others of his ilk - decided long ago that being totally analog-pure just wasn't practical anymore.
I'm definitely not fighting the future here," notes Sweet, who first stuck his toe into the Digidesign waters way back in 1991 during the making of his break-through album, we'd had all these little ideas, like backwards guitars and vocals, and Pro Tools made it all so easy to put together. I'm not a total purist - therefore I'm never averse to working with any kind of new technology."
Aside from the convenience factor, Sweet views the hard-disk realm as the gateway to a more colorful, organically assembled world of recording, which is the main reason he'd been salivating over the Digidesign product line in the first place: the ability to instantly view on a computer screen those ideas you bounce around inside your head for hours and hours.
"To take free-form stuff, and chop it up and move it around - that to me is the way to go," says Sweet. "I mean, I don't want to be encumbered by it, but I'd always dreamed of the day when it's all just this tiny box that you look at from many different ways. Although it doesn't mean that this is all going to change the way I make my records - I see it mainly as a creative tool for making demos, as well as having another hobby."
A less obvious aspect of Sweet's direct-to-disk usage is tape consumption. Given the tremendous volume of demos that Sweet produces on a regular basis, he's have to build an addition just to house all those reels. Those less prolific types might not find that an issue, Sweet is thankful for his multi-gigabyte solution. "The sheer amount of stuff that I do demo-wise...you could never have that much tape hanging around - it would be so expensive and crazy!"
Sweet is also enamored of the random-access aspect of recording to hard disk. As a guy who's become used to creating his own vocal choir for years, he finds digital indexing to be the big time saver. "Since I'm always tracking a lot of backing vocals, and there's no rewind time, you can get to different sections of the song immediately," notes Sweet. "And that's saved so much wear and tear on the Sony decks - they just get worn out after a while, especially with that kind of abuse."
Though a true modernist when purchasing home-studio hardware, Sweet prefers more antiquated means of sound manipulation once in the big studio. Sweet staples like "Divine Intervention," "Sick of Myself," or "All Over My Head" - with their backwards vocals, super-compressed drums and layers of heavily distorted guitars - owe more to the spirit of the "White Album" than any product of the current generation. And like those of his forefathers, Sweet's best sounds have often been the product of good, old-fashioned equipment tampering. During a quick-mix of 100% Fun's kick-off track "Sick of Myself," for instance, Sweet and producer O'Brien attempted maximum volume by leaving the needles in the red for the entire song (a re-mix was never attempted). On the other hand, an earlier Sweet album-opener - Girlfriend's "Divine Intervention" - benefited from a sudden case of equipment malfunction.
"On that song, the drums ended up all on one side," says Sweet. "So of course, everybody was saying 'yeah, right, Beatles.' But as it turns out, that wasn't even supposed to be like that! We had a bad channel in the compressor, which knocked out one of the sides! But it sounded great that way - so we just left it like that. I just love compression in general - I put too much compression on everything, and then I compress the whole thing again at the end. I'm a sick compression junkie! But it just makes everything sound so cool."
Though Sweet's obviously made most of his recent home improvement- from the insane amount of disk space to his Line 6 "Amp Farm" amplifier modeling plug-in- a part of him still thinks there's something a little fishy about all this micro management.
"They've encapsulated the last 50 years of recorded sound and technology into a handful of programs that can do it all," says Sweet, slightly guilt-stricken. "Sure people like me will always use magnetic tape and real amps, but as an artistic tool, this stuff is impossible to resist. It's just gotten so good. But I still use it just like a tape recorder, I don't get into any MIDI stuff, or whatever. It's just what I've always wanted: a free-form, organic tool where you can go right in there and do whatever you want."
Knowing full well that the future crop of self-producers may never have to mess with a real amp setting or even hang a mic might be slightly troubling to Sweet, but he'll get over it. "I hate raving about this stuff because I know it's just wrong to do things this way," cracks the guitarist. "On the other hand...why not?"
Times-Picayune (Orleans Edition), October 22, 1999
By Keith Spera, Music writer
Before plunging into the psychedelic-tinged pop of Matthew Sweet's new In
Reverse CD, fans must first puzzle through its packaging.
If the CD's jewelbox is held as most are - with the spine to the left
- the artwork appears upside down. But Sweet and the album's art director
intend the jewelbox to be viewed "in reverse," with the spine
to the right. That way, the art - a 1963 oil painting by Margaret Keane
- appears right-side up. The same concept applies to the CD booklet: With
the spine to the right,
the lyrics and credits should be read from "back" to front.
Not everyone has solved this riddle.
"I'm worried, because we've found an alarming number of people that
(stock) it upside down in record stores, or people think it's manufactured
incorrectly," Sweet said recently from his Los Angeles home. "If
you receive it as it's intended - which I don't think too many people do
right off the bat - the only thing different is that the spine is on the
right. You have to adjust your thinking; it doesn't even seem backward to
me now. But even among my immediate family, there was a lot of confusion.
You've got to really want to open the CD box."
The quirks of the packaging reflect the complexities of the music inside,
a synergy not lost on the music's creator.
"People are confused by it, but I kind of like that," Sweet said.
"I like that people have to think about it a little bit and spend a
little time with it, because the record isn't a totally prepackaged, easy,
commercial record. It's a record you're supposed to spend time with and
listen to and experience like a record rather than a product."
In Reverse is perhaps Sweet's most ambitious recording to date. His
pristine guitar-pop - inspired by the Byrds, Beatles and Big Star, and rendered
to near perfection on his 1991 breakthrough album Girlfriend - is
still at the music's core. But he fleshes out several new tracks with multiple
guitars, horns and percussion; in the studio, as many as 17 musicians sometimes
played simultaneously.
Sweet took his inspiration from legendary 1960s producer Phil Spector and
the trademark "Wall of Sound" Spector built on hits by the Crystals,
the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers. Sweet even recruited bassist Carol
Kaye, who performed on many Spector recordings, to contribute to In Reverse.
"Everyone says I'm attempting to make my (Beach Boys) Pet Sounds
record, but it was really supposed to be more like Spector," Sweet
said. "Pet Sounds was very orchestrated; it has strings and
orchestral instruments, and it's very much like orchestral rock. Whereas
with the Spector thing, it's a little more brutal rock 'n' roll. It's three
pianos banging, three guitars banging, two basses, two drummers; it's more
about making the sound indistinct and reverb- y and dramatic."
While recording In Reverse in Los Angeles this spring, Sweet - who
performs Tuesday at the House of Blues - sketched out only rough chord structures
for the musicians to follow; they improvised within that framework. Such
an aggregation could have ended up a train wreck, but Sweet says the recording
process was relatively painless.
"Generally it worked itself out," he said. "In a certain
sense, it was supposed to be a train wreck, in terms of how crazy it sounds,
compared to records you're used to hearing now."
The craziness of the music is also meant to correspond to the lyrical themes
that run throughout.
"It's a record about time and about thinking about your life, and looking
for meaning in it," Sweet said. "That entails thinking about your
life before now and after now, because your moment in the present is so
brief. In a way, that's what I meant by 'In Reverse': How you get back to
where you started, as far as in your feelings about life. For me, the older
I got, the more jaded and hopeless I felt about everything. But on the other
hand, the more precious life was to me, and the more I looked for the small
things that are really what matter.
"So I wanted this sense of disorientation about (the album's music),
like you were getting pulled in different directions. I want to connect
with people that really care about a record. Those are people that I'm thinking
about, because so much of the industry is focused on only the commercial
radio side of things. I'm just sick of that."
In the two years since Sweet's last album, Blue Sky On Mars, met
with a lukewarm reception, he has been bounced around the BMG corporate
family, finally landing on Volcano, now a subsidiary of pop powerhouse Jive/Zoomba.
He is cautiously optimistic that fans will discover his new music, though
he has no grand illusions about its chances on commercial radio. With modern
rock ruled by the rap metal of Limp Bizkit and similarly heavy acts and
pop radio dominated by the processed, prefab pop of 'N Sync, the Backstreet
Boys and Britney Spears, there are few outlets for Sweet's brand of shimmering,
guitar-based songcraft.
"It's not a time right now where artists like me - a pop-y, guy singer-songwriter
- are making it big," Sweet said. "On my last couple of records,
I had a sense of expectation from radio and everybody. After Blue Sky
On Mars didn't do very well, I felt like there were no expectations
or pressure. I could do whatever.
"(In Reverse) is a record about the listener having an experience.
If I had made a record that was really commercial, nobody would have been
into that. I feel that it's better that I made a record that is really me,
and heartfelt for me, one that some of my traditional fans are able to get
into, than if I made some grasp for fitting into one of the really narrow
formats available to me right now. I think that would be even worse."
The Daily Nebraskan, November 2, 1999
By Cliff Hicks
Even though he's sold millions of records, played to sold-out concerts for years - both across America and overseas - and made one of what Rolling Stone called "The Essential Recordings of the '90s," power-pop musician Matthew Sweet retains that most admirable of traits - humbleness.
"I don't feel ever like it's a given I'll get to make a record," the Lincoln native said in a telephone interview.
"With this record, more than ever, I feel like I'm lucky to be in making a record. For artists like me, right now, it's a really tough time," he said. "And a lot of them are seen making albums that are really good that aren't even coming out, because of the state of the industry, the pressure on things commercially, how narrow radio has become."
During the telephone interview, Sweet was a pleasure to talk to, gracious and amiable. He laughed several times, especially when a noon wake-up call to his hotel room gave us pause at the beginning of the conversation.
Sweet's most recent album, In Reverse, was released Oct. 12 to overwhelmingly positive reviews. In some ways, the album marks a turning point for his career, which at one point looked as if it might never get off the ground.
Matthew Sweet began his career as a musician in Lincoln, where he grew up. Playing guitar in high school, he would eventually move to Athens, Ga., enroll in the University of Athens and join Oh-OK, a band formed by Lynda Stipe, sister to Michael Stipe of R.E.M.
From there, Sweet left with David Pierce, Oh-OK's drummer, and formed Buzz of Delight. The band cut a record that caught the attention of Columbia Records, for whom Sweet recorded his first solo record, Inside, which was released in 1986. Sweet also moved from Athens to New York. Despite generally positive reviews, Inside didn't catch the ears of listeners, and Columbia let Sweet go.
A&M Records picked up Sweet, and he recorded his second album Earth, which was released in 1989. Again, the record failed to do well, and Sweet was sent off in search of another record label.
Upon hearing the demo tape for his third record, the president of Zoo Entertainment signed him personally, and Sweet moved to Los Angeles. It was this 1991 album, his third, that would catch the attention of America. It was called Girlfriend.
The album, recorded with a live band, was the first time Sweet used other musicians to a heavy extent. Sweet played most of Inside and Earth himself. But on Girlfriend, guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine added pyrotechnical guitars, Greg Leisz brought in soft slide guitars, and Ric Menck held down the beats with solid drums.
In the spring of 1992, Girlfriend became a bonafide hit. The first single, "Divine Intervention," had done moderately well. But it was the title track (which had originally been named "Goodfriend") that took off, supported by a flashy video that mixed footage of Sweet with Japanese animation from Space Adventurer Cobra.
Eight years after its release, while Sweet was in the midst of recording In Reverse, Girlfriend was named by Rolling Stone as one of "The Essential Recordings of the '90s." Alternative Press magazine had named it in its "Top 100 of the '90s" late last year. These reviews pleased Sweet but didn't intimidate him.
"I was really happy that someone cared to put it in such stature," Sweet said, "but I wouldn't say I felt pressure because of it."
After a long tour, Sweet finally returned home and went back into the studio not long after.
"There's a lot of angst in Altered Beast," Sweet said. "I had a lot of turmoil in my feelings during that time. I was really overwhelmed with what went on for Girlfriend. I wasn't expecting it. I wasn't very prepared for it. My life really changed pretty dramatically at that time.
"Altered Beast ... I was really venting. I didn't have any time off. I came off the road, and I was in the studio three weeks later to make that record, so it was very much a product of me at that time."
The album had moderate success with two modern rock hits, "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule," and Sweet went back out on tour again.
In 1994, Sweet released an EP called Son Of Altered Beast that included live tracks as well as a few remixes and B-sides. It was mainly intended to serve as a stop-gap until the next record came out.
100% Fun, released in 1995, once again gained Sweet solid reviews and popular record play. This album, Sweet's first with producer Brendan O'Brien, captured Sweet's blistery power-pop rock well. The singles "Sick of Myself" and "We're The Same" both did moderately well, and Sweet played both a solo tour and opened for Soul Asylum.
It was for his next album, the 1997 Blue Sky On Mars, that Sweet made a major change. He parted ways with Lloyd and Quine and played almost all the instruments himself. O'Brien again produced.
"I mainly change just to do something different each time," Sweet said. "I've tried not to use exactly the same group of people every time.
"It's kind of like you can't win, y'know? If I made every record with Richard Lloyd or Quine, then everyone would say 'Oh, he's always the same,' and when I don't, they complain I don't have them. It's hard to win with that, but I've always tried to do what I felt like doing and weather whatever everyone else says," he said with a laugh.
Regardless of the reason, Blue Sky On Mars did not do as well commercially as his past three records. That, added to the tumultuous times of the record industry, did not make for a great break for Sweet. Sweet's label Zoo Entertainment became Volcano as much of the industry went through giant shifts, mergers and heavy artist layoffs.
"I spent about a year trying to get out of the contract, and we didn't want to be in a situation where it was a brand new label and a fledgling sort of thing," Sweet said. "But by the time we were making the record for (Volcano), we were glad that it was them, because of just the way that the record industry had become. To be on a big label for me right now - this record could easily not get the kind of care it needs to find its way onto the radio and out into the world.
"So, now I feel lucky to have the people working who are working, so all has worked out for the best."
During this time, Sweet was constantly recording demos. Sweet said nearly 160 songs were demoed for In Reverse. One of the demos, "Write Your Own Song," was about the record industry turmoil and made it onto the record.
"It really came out early during the time I had off before I made this record. There was a ton of pressure throughout the industry on artists to only produce the song that the people needed to get on the radio. It was a lot of commercial pressure. More than I've ever felt it before. On some day, I sort of snapped and wrote this snide little song," he said, laughing.
"I'm telling you, I never got so fast a call back from my publisher and my manager on a tape of songs as the tape that one was on," he continued, still chuckling on the other end of the line. "They were quaking in their boots like I hated them or something. And I felt like the song also worked as a metaphor on another level - like a relationship thing, sort of like 'Go Your Own Way.' I think of it in my mind as dedicated to all of my fellow artists who have listened to all of the shit they say to us, trying to make us be like everyone else."
In early 1999, Sweet began recording In Reverse in the studio with three co-producers: Jim Scott (who is best known for his work on Tom Petty's "Last Dance With Mary Jane"), Fred Maher (who co-produced Girlfriend) and Greg Leisz (who has played on many of Sweet's records).
Sweet said despite the many cooks in the kitchen, things went very well.
"It was the greatest. It was planned to be this team of my friends. Each of them had things to offer me," he said. "We had this understanding that I would be able to take from each of them whatever I needed. Nobody had an agenda of what it should be. "I really felt like I was kind of producing the record but with all my friends. We were hoping it would work really well, and it really did."
The album was a dramatic shift from the days of Girlfriend. That album was a very dry and crisp record in a time filled with heavy reverb. While today's rock has moved back to the sound Sweet had during the Girlfriend days, In Reverse moves back to the Phil Spector "wall-of-sound" reverb and Beach Boys-style harmonies.
"I've been thinking about using a lot of reverb for a long time. With this (record), I made one batch of demos that had a ton of reverb, where I was trying to create that Spector large-group sort of thing, and that batch sort of set up that sound on the record," Sweet said.
"I wanted it really to be more exotic. I wanted to be ambitious and psychedelic," Sweet said. "I really wanted the record to be special and have a lot to it."
"You live half your life in one direction. Then for the second half, you go in reverse, back to where you started - understand the way you felt about life in the beginning.
"It's kind of a strange thing to be saying, but that's sort of how I was thinking about it. I think a lot of people see the title and think it means retro, old-style rock, and that's not what it's supposed to be, but you know, whatever.
"Titles are so hard to explain," Sweet said. "Oftentimes, it's as much about the sound of it, the feel of it. It just seemed like the right title to me."
Much of the album had been mapped out in Sweet's demos, but this isn't to say some major changes didn't happen. Four of his songs, "Day In the Sun," "Even From My Eyes," "Hole In the Clouds," and "Thunderstorm," were merged together into one massive epic that closes out the album.
At the beginning of his career, Sweet was a little uncomfortable with the intimacy of fame, but he's come to terms with that. He said the levels of separation no longer bother him.
"It's really touching to me that someone could hear what I felt and they feel that too. That's the amazing thing about music - when you capture an emotion."
For the next year, Sweet said he would focus his energy on promoting the new album.
"I have a really strong attachment to it personally. I really want to see it find its way in the world as best as it can. We'll stay out touring. I'm just focused on trying to keep my career going, so I'll just keep writing and make another record before too long."
By Kieran Grant
Matthew Sweet doesn't seem like the sort of guy who takes liberties.
Unassuming, polite, the California-based singer is so completely devoid of rock star-ish qualities, you have to wonder how he gets his own way at all.
His new album, In Reverse, is the sort of uncompromised recording that could have sent the marketing folks at his label, Volcano, screaming and seen Sweet dropped like a bad habit.
Well, Sweet says over the phone from a recent tour stop in Atlanta, it was simple.
"Unbelievably, the people who run my label were encouraging me to be ambitious," he says with noticeable surprise.
"I was like, 'If I make the record and you guys don't have what you need, I'll just record more, okay?' I don't think they thought it was going to be an easy sell. But they couldn't quite bring themselves to say, 'Do more,' because they really liked the record."
Sweet unveils tunes from In Reverse at Lee's Palace tonight in a special gig for Edge 102 ticket winners.
With its dense, wall-of-sound-style production and ornate pop, the album, Sweet's seventh, marks a sonic leap forward. While past hits -- 1991's Girlfriend, '95's 100% Fun - relied on crisp but tricky guitar tunes, In Reverse stretches the ample melodies out like a vast canvas and covers it with horns, harpsichord and psychedelic tape effects. It's the sort of thing Sweet has always hinted at, drawing heavily from his classic-pop diet of Beach Boys and Beatles.
This record, he admits, "sort of exploded" during a long break he took after 1997's commercially disappointing Blue Sky On Mars.
"We talked about putting different kinds of styles from the whole century on the record, but never pursued it," he says with a laugh. "I wanted the record to be exotic and forward-looking. Just more. I felt things had become so focused on fitting in and being commercial.
"For most of the time I had off, I felt the same pressure everyone's feeling right now: Come up with that hit that will fit on the radio."
So Sweet freed himself from such concerns and cast a wealth of players for In Reverse, including legendary Pet Sounds session bassist Carol Kaye. "I learned to play bass from Carol Kaye bass books," Sweet says. "She was the real star on the record, though she didn't act like one. She was extremely creative and kicked the butt of the whole band. That never would have happened if I had played bass on those songs. I was never overwhelmed, but I did feel lucky."
Meanwhile, Sweet's writing got complex enough to prompt "Thunderstorm," a 10-minute rock symphony that closes In Reverse.
Sweet says the seeds for a mini-opera were planted by Cliff Bernstein, honcho at Volcano, the Jive Records offshoot that picked up Sweet's contract in 1997.
Who could ever dream that a label would ask anyone to do something crazy in 1999?
"I wonder if I would have ever done it without that kind of encouragement."
The Georgia Straight, Volume 33, Number 1663, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, November 4 - 11, 1999
In Reverse goes back to a time when Phil Spector was king and the best songs were multilayered
By Steve Newton
Matthew Sweet is best-known for stripped down, three-and-a-half minute pop-rock tunes that require no more than five people to perform. But on his new CD, In Reverse, the Nebraska native goes hog-wild in the personnel department, lining up as many as 17 musicians to play at once. On the disc's nine-and-a-half minute closer, "Thunderstorm," he has two drummers, two percussionists, and two bassists going at it, as well as performers on theremin, euphonium, and flugelhorn. Then there are five guys whaling away on guitar. Has Sweet gone session-player crazy, or what?
"Normally, I've done more four- or five-piece rock stuff," he relates from a truck-stop payphone near Atlanta, "but before I made this record I went on kind of a kick listening to a Phil Spector box set. I was reading about the way he approached recording, and got it into my head that some of my more melodic songs might benefit from that sort of dramatic treatment. I really only did it on four songs on the record, but little things about it kinda spilled into the rest of the record, like the double drums. So it was just kind of a fun experiment, and worked really nicely."
While Sweet's multiplayer approach made for a fairly cramped recording studio, it did give him the opportunity to work closely with such session legends as drum great Jim Keltner and bassist Carol Kaye, the latter noted for bringing the bottom end to the Beach Boys' monumental Pet Sounds album. Sweet usually plays bass himself on his records, but on In Reverse's mass-band tunes - when he had to guide the assembled group while singing along - he stuck with the more familiar six-string. "I'm not very good at playing bass and singing when I play live," he says, "so I thought I should play guitar on the large group sessions. And my live bass player, Tony Marsico, was already slated to play upright bass on those sessions, so I started thinkin', 'Who would be fun to get as my replacement [on electric bass]?' I just thought it would be interesting to get a person who had a connection to back then, and Carol played on a lot of Spector recordings, so it was really cool to have her around. She was kind of a barometer for how well it was working."
The average listener might not even notice that there's acoustic and electric bass being played simultaneously on some tracks, but Sweet claims that combining the two makes a difference to the overall sound. "It just adds to that swampy feeling," he points out. "The Spector sound is different from a record like Pet Sounds, which is a little more orchestrated. Spector's stuff is more rock'n'roll, kind of everybody banging along on the same chords, and you don't really hear the individual instruments very much. But when you have a lot of instruments playing the same chords and notes, it creates this sort of wash, and when you add big reverb to it, it just gives this effect that's kind of grandiose. You don't really latch onto one thing, it's more about the aura of it."
Apart from the logistical problem of getting so many musicians together for a recording session, there was also the financial one, as session players don't come cheap. But Sweet says that his label, Volcano Records, had faith in him when it came to budgeting the project. "With the large group there's a lot of money spent really quickly," he admits, "and we had to be careful in planning it. But the amazing thing about it is you get so much for your money, because in two days we recorded four backing tracks that were pretty much done. When you have that many musicians, it's not like you have to overdub a lot more stuff."
As well as being a wizard with poppy melodies, Sweet has great taste in guitarists, as can be heard in the work of both newcomer Pete Phillips and veteran Greg Leisz, the lap- and pedal-steel ace Sweet has played with, off and on, since his breakthrough Girlfriend album of '91. Leisz is touring with Seattle guitar wizard Bill Frisell, so he won't be in the lineup when Sweet's six-piece band plays the Starfish Room next Sunday (November 14), but his presence was strongly felt during the recording of In Reverse. "He was part of the production team on this record," notes Sweet, "which was great because I got to have him around for a whole record, which I've never been able to afford to do before. He was sort of like musical director for those sessions, and just having him around to play things whenever we wanted was really great."
Sweet says the critical reaction to his latest musical adventure has been positive, but as far as getting that crucial radio-play, things aren't so cut-and-dried. "It's very weird here radiowise," he comments, "especially for an artist like me, because the realm of radio where I normally have been played is super hard right now. Alternative-rock radio is all rap metal, kinda Korn / Limp Bizkit bands, and Top 40 radio is really sort of Backstreet Boys - , Britney Spears - oriented. There's no one easy format to get on all the stations really quickly, so we have to get me on a whole new realm of radio that's in between. But the record's only been out a coupla weeks, and we're slowly getting adds on a variety of formats so, so far so good."
Wall of Sound, November 8, 1999
By Gary Graff
Matthew Sweet's exceptional new album, In Reverse, contains 14 songs, but quite a bit of focus has been placed on just four of them. That's because those tunes — "If Time Permits," "I Should Never Have Let You Know," "Worse to Live," and the nine and a half-minute opus "Thunderstorm" — were recorded in a Phil Spector "wall of sound"-style setting over two days in Studio 2 at the former United Western Studios (now known as Cello Studios), where many of Spector's legendary recordings were created.
To affect Spector's sound, Sweet and his co-producers (Jim Scott, Fred Maher, and Greg Leisz) assembled a 17-piece rock orchestra that included legendary bassist Carol Kaye and theramin virtuoso Pamelia Kurstin.
"It was really, really fun," the Nebraska-born Sweet, 35, says of the sessions. "It was kind of scary, an experiment. None of us had recorded that many people at once. We called everybody we knew to come play on it.
"It just sounds so complete when you record with a band that big. When we'd hear the stuff back right after we played it, it was just great," Sweet adds.
Sweet says bassist Kaye's presence in particular lent authenticity to what he and his cohorts were doing, as she'd worked with Spector and also played on the Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds album. He was initially reluctant to exploit her memories, but soon found that "she loves to tell stories. We didn't have to pump her too hard," he says.
"She remembered the funny things they recorded in the room we were in, like The Addams Family theme," Sweet says. And being next door to the studio where Pet Sounds was recorded, Sweet was further thrilled to find Brian Wilson working there again.
"I played him 'I Should Never Have Let You Know,'" Sweet says. "He and his wife, Melinda, came in. At the end he jumped up and yelled, 'I love it! I … love it!' He was really nice; he talked about the chord structure and everything. That was a huge deal to us, really fun. I'm really glad we were all there, the whole production team, so everyone could back each other up that it really happened."
Mojo, December 1999
By Barney Hoskyns
Is it fair to say that In Reverse is steeped in Californian pop?
I love being in LA and I love a lot of music that came out of here. Obviously, there was a feeling of history working at the Cello studio, which was the Western part of United-Western way before it became Ocean Way. Ocean Way owned both buildings and sold off the Western side, which was where Brian did a lot of Pet Sounds. I just loved the way the room sounded. Everyone who came by said, "You do know this is the best room in the world, don't you?" Also, I was listening to some Spector box set stuff and to oldies radio and thinking how back then there was real drama to a song that was heartfelt, that you don't hear so much now. And I just thought it would be a nice thing for me to try to take some of my more melodic songs and do them with a large group where lots of instruments were doubling each other and where you get that sort of other-worldly or hyperreal vibe.
How personal are these songs?
The record is a really personal one for me. It just seemed like such a weird time in the industry, where nobody seems to care about records anymore. Even "Millenium Blues," which isn't one of the intensely personal songs, is kind of personal because it's about how I always knew at the millenium I'd be 35, right in the middle of my life, and I just kind of got that feeling when I wrote that song.
Do you think of yourself as being in the powerpop tradition?
Sometimes I think I've felt like "powerpop" is a little more limited as a range than what I'd like to think I do, but on the other hand the powerpop world is the only place I ever felt I had any kind of stature. And I will say that as I get older I feel more and more like I need to keep the flame alive. And I know that in talking to Ric Menck [Velvet Crush drummer and Sweet stalwart], we feel that if we don't keep doing it, no kids will know how it sounded!
How should we take "Write Your Own Song?"
People kept telling me "You've got to have the hit, careers don't matter anymore," and I was so frustrated that I wrote this song really quickly - a little ode of anger. It can be taken metaphorically, but both my manager and my publisher got reall y paranoid about it. I think it's for all my fellow musicians who are still attempting to put out records in the current climate. In America it's like nobody matters and everybody's scared for their future. It seems like a time of shake-up.
Chart Attack, January 2000
By James Hayashi-Tennant
"It's a brave new world for a record like mine."
It seems strange that Matthew Sweet would say that. The 35-year-old Nebraska native has just released a record called In Reverse, and in many ways, it's a step backward in time, not in vision. Despite melancholy melodies and straight-forward pop principles, Sweet is right - a record like In Reverse has to compete in a brave new world, full of clones, drones and sucka MCs on the microphones.
"Right now, alternative rock radio as we used to know it is gone," says Sweet. "There's a few stations that will still play a record like mine, but then there's the Super Top 40 Britney Spears phenomenon, you know."
Artists like Sweet must feel as if they've taken the bus one stop too far - and the neighbourhood, much to their surprise, has changed drastically. Sweet doesn't even fall into the zone of post-alternative "modern rock." In Reverse is too low-key and high quality to offer cut-rate guitar anthems or badly disguised cock rock lyrics - in other words, to offer what currently sells.
"Things have become so commercialized, and all the pressure I felt was totally about that," Sweet recalls. "The record I needed to make was a record that didn't play any of those games. Amazingly, by the time I was going in the studio, even my label was encouraging me to do that. [In Reverse] doesn't do anything on anyone else's terms - but I think that's probably going to make it a little more difficult."
Sweet is right again. In Reverse is fairly elaborate for a pop record, featuring a simple yet dense production critics compare to Phil Spector or The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. On top of that, songs run seamlessly into others, giving the album an almost psychedelic feel and adding to the impression that In Reverse is one work, not a dozen or so separate efforts. As a result, it sounds like nothing else in current release. Critics have been quick to champion the record, comparing it to his breakthrough album, Girlfriend.
"[But] even Girlfriend," laughs Sweet. "At the time, not everybody gave it great reviews. Now it has this sort of status where everyone has decided, 'O.K., that was great.' It's kind of in hindsight, though it opened up my whole career for me."
That career has been a steady one of loyal fandom and critical acclaim. Yet despite the fact that some are calling In Reverse a "return" to albums such as Girlfriend and Altered Beast, Sweet believes It's different - different enough to warrant an entirely new promotion approach. He and his label, Zomba, are taking it slowly no flashy posters, no duets with Leann Rhymes, just a tour-intensive, grassroots, word-of-mouth campaign.
"It's a scary thing to do," he admits. "I've had people asking, 'Why haven't you made a video yet? What's going on, are they doing anything?' But I have to trust in the people working it. We're trying to take this approach where we're easing out with the record and hope that the grassroots thing takes hold."
Sweet has little to lose with that approach. After 100% Fun sold over 700,000 copies, the label attempted to push Blue Sky On Mars with the usual-big artist-hoopla-video additions, posters, even enormous radio additions for "Where Do You Get Love." Still, Blue Sky sold only 100,000 or so records. Sweet fans were not disappointed - and In Reverse suggests they never will be — but it nevertheless raises the question, in today's pabulum-packed popscape, how does one sell records? Are two singles necessary? Three? Or does the entire album have to appeal to a wider demographic? Should Matt start working out and wearing leopard skin cowboy hats?
"I just won't be that kind of artist, you know?" Sweet says. "I don't wanna have to look back at the stupid record I made with loops all over it because I felt pressure that that's all anyone was doing. It isn't the answer."
Sweet's answer was to record In Reverse as an album, not as packaging for "Sick Of Myself II." By doing that, Sweet has made his most even, solid work to date. While none of the songs will change the course of FM radio, they stick like glue when you hear them on your stereo. The first single, "What Matters," is classic Matthew Sweet. It may or may not have the hooks to climb the pop charts; but then again, it isn't outfitted to scale that particular face. It wasn't meant to do so.
"Nobody can live up to the pressure the labels have right now for hits," Sweet says emphatically. "You're selling a million records or you don't matter at all — but records just can't stand up to that. Careers are dwindling away, projects don't see the light of day or they come out so late they have no relevance anymore — it's just bizarre."
"I'm sure so many artists are giving up right now," he continues, "while the people who are really driven to make music are going to keep making music. These people aren't going to stop making music. All of us are going to keep doing stuff and somehow, it's going to have an outlet."
Denver Post, January 21, 2000
Hey, it's not his fault you can't hear power pop on the radio
By G. Brown, Denver Post Special Writer
Mixing guitar-heavy hooks with just enough emotional angst, Matthew Sweet is a champion of power pop. His breezy musical smarts were found on his 1992 breakthrough album Girlfriend and 1995's 100% Fun, which featured the exuberant modern-rock hit "Sick Of Myself."
But with the arrival of hip-hop rock and teen pop, power pop is the genre being slighted. Sweet is keeping the flame flickering.
"For a while, when bands like Semisonic and Fastball had hits, things looked pretty good," says Sweet, 35, who will perform at the Fox Theatre in Boulder on Tuesday night. "Right now, everybody's saying how hard it is, and I'm feeling that, too. So things must be worse than ever for artists like me.
But on some level, it's always been like that. Even during the times when great things were happening, it was still a struggle - it always felt like we weren't quite getting there. The kind of music I do is a limited realm - there's only so many people that are getting into thoughtful embraces with records these days, trying to feel their own lives through them."
In Reverse is the critically acclaimed American songwriter's seventh studio album, and the tracks "What Matters" and the hard-rocking "Faith In You" stick to a winning formula, wedding swooping guitar licks to well-mannered melodies.
But several songs are partly inspired by producer Phil Spector's famed "wall of sound" recording technique. Sweet decided to experiment with the Spector approach after recording a set of demos in which he multitracked his instruments and glutted on reverb.
"I've always listened to lots of '60s and '50s oldies radio when I travel, because everything sounds so cool and weird compared to now. Some of my favorite stuff is the Righteous Brothers hits that they cut with [Phil] Spector - 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin',' 'Unchained Melody.' They're heartfelt and melancholy, but they're really dramatic and kind of loud," Sweet says.
"I started thinking, 'Maybe if I could take some of my ballads and record them that way - that would be interesting and new for me.' I didn't want to make a record that was fully orchestral, have strings and syrupy sounds on it ... even though that would sound fresh and good in today's climate! I wanted a rock approach, so I used the rock instruments he would have used - pianos, two electric and three acoustic guitars, basses and multiple keyboards."
During a two-day period in Los Angeles at Cello Studios (known as United Western in the '60s), Sweet recorded live with a small army of musicians that included Carol Kaye, who played on the Beach Boys' classic Pet Sounds album.
"She really keyed in on the music, reacted to things on an emotional level. It was cool to see. She played a lot of guitar sessions for Spector, too," Sweet says. "I felt fortunate to be able to make a whole album in that room. There must be people who would thrill to be in that studio."
The resulting songs - "If Time Permits," "I Should Never Have Let You Know," "Worse To Live," and the epic closer "Thunderstorm" - journey to the massive "wet" sounds of the past that seem outright extreme now.
"What's amazing is it's 90 percent done the minute you do it. There's
not that kind of free-form approach very often. These days people control
every little aspect of the instruments, and it's no wonder that you don't
get much variety," Sweet says. "If you let working on music on
computers consume you, you can get into a black hole of 'fixing' where the
initial point
of the thing is lost."
Sweet's tuneful pop should find a place on radio ... shouldn't it?
"I look back and think, 'How have I been around a decade and made all these records?' It's hard to fathom that I'm even hanging in there as well as I am. It gives me hope - if I just do good work and keep working, what I do might come around a little more."
Tuneful pop
Who: Matthew Sweet
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Fox Theatre, Boulder
Tickets: $12.75, through Ticketmaster (303-830-8497)
The Onion, February 3, 2000
By Jeff Stratton
Since the release of his 1991 breakthrough Girlfriend, Matthew Sweet has been frequently and unfairly maligned or ignored for not duplicating that classic's content and success. Consequently, albums such as 1995's hugely accessible 100% Fun and 1993's dark, grossly underrated Altered Beast have been perceived as under-performing critically and commercially. Sweet's ability to craft memorable pop songs is rarely equaled, and his chiming guitar work continues to develop, but that has yet to translate into broad mainstream success. The recent In Reverse finds Sweet weathering music-business strife and personal change with a rougher exterior protecting characteristically tender pop songwriting. Sweet recently talked with The Onion A.V. Club about the music business, mortality, and what the future holds.
The Onion: Did you have any ideas about what 2000 would be like when you were a kid?
Matthew Sweet: It is weird that it's 2000 now. When I was a kid, I must have thought, "I'll be 35 when it turns 2000." On my new record, there's a song called "Millennium Blues" about my life being sort of half over in 2000.
O: With all the medical advances, you may live to be 130. So you could be nowhere near half over.
MS: I know. I thought about that, but I wonder if it's really true.
O: Do you have any predictions for this century?
MS: I don't know; it's frightening to think about to some extent, because things change so much and there are still so many problems in the world. It's hard to imagine that it's all just going to turn out great. Some things need to be worked out. I expect to be amazed by the things that happen, because it seems that things have been changing at exponentially faster rates lately than they did when we were kids. Obviously, things have changed more in the last 50 years than they ever have before. I think we can expect things to change a lot, just from the standpoint of population. There's a study I just read today saying that there'll be twice as many Americans in the year 2100. But maybe we'll still be alive then, depending on the medical advances.
O: How about popular music? Will it get better or worse? Will radio still suck?
MS: It's always sucked. When I was a teenager, that was never where I went for music. It's hard to believe how bad it is. It's very strange. I hate complaining about it, 'cause I don't want to sound like an old fart who doesn't like new music. [Laughs.] But it does seem really narrow, as narrow as it was in the late '80s with metal bands. I do expect it'll get better in some way. I like to think people are going to want it to, that it's not just you and me who think that way. There are a lot of things going on with radio that affect me. First of all, alternative-rock radio, where I have the nearest thing to hits I've had, does not play records like mine anymore. It's all very heavy, rap/rock kind of stuff. Even stations that a couple of years ago were playing Fastball and Semisonic won't play their records now. Maybe Semisonic will come out with a record so heavy that it'll get played. I don't know. I still get played on some of those stations, but only the ones that will play something that's not as heavy. It's just long, hard work. It's so hit-oriented on the radio: It's a very narrow playlist in most places, everybody follows everybody else, and it's hard work to break into it. It seems to me that maybe the promise of the Internet and the future is that the people who care about music for different reasons, and don't want to only hear the 20 songs that radio decides you can hear at any given time, are eventually going to have a place to go to find out about music. And it's not MTV anymore; they won't play a video unless it's already a big hit on the radio. Radio really rules everything, which is a drag. If you can manage a hit somehow, everything falls into place, at least for a while. Without the numbers, all artists struggle, and that's the classic battle between art and commerce in action.
O: Will pop music, songwriters, and guitarists still be relevant in the future? Or will technology change that?
MS: I still think it's very relevant. You can't deny it, because it's very direct and it remains extremely close to people. It's not one step removed, like when you make an electronic record and you didn't exactly make the sound yourself, you know? I also think nothing becomes clearer faster than the limitations of electronic music. Pretty much everything has been tried with it. It seems to be the kind of thing that will never last that long, just until the focus gets more on people instead of trying to replace the newest trend. It'll come back again; it just takes people being interested again. When people are tired enough of groove- and rap-oriented rock, people with songs will come back with a vengeance. There are a lot of artists around right now who are really good and in the prime of their music-making ability who aren't getting much of an outlet, and that's a shame. Part of me feels that some smart person will figure out how to get them all together and co-opt them and make some money and make their careers last.
O: In terms of your output, it's safe to say that Girlfriend is considered by nearly everyone to be your creative peak.
MS: That's the way it's been. But 100% Fun did as well as Girlfriend much faster and I didn't get that quite as much. I got it around the time of Altered Beast and Blue Sky On Mars; those records people didn't connect with as much.
O: Why do you think that was?
MS: I think because Girlfriend was such a simple, emotional, relationship sort of record, and it could apply to so many people in relationships. I didn't want to try to make these completely standard relationship records forever, so I went off and made a little weirder and freakier record with Altered Beast that had different sorts of moods on it. 100% Fun was more balanced. Blue Sky On Mars was perceived as not connecting well with people, but it's done better than the new record has, and people are saying that the new album is as good as Girlfriend or the best since Girlfriend.
O: Does it bother you that everyone uses it as the yardstick to measure your career?
MS: I don't think it does. Everybody still only talks about Girlfriend, but at least they really like the record. I'm happy to have a record anyone cares so much about.
O: Getting back to songs like "Millennium Blues," are you more concerned with your own mortality at this point?
MS: Not more than I ever have been. I've always thought about that; it's always been the thing that informs the depression in my life. [Laughs.]
O: Isn't 35 kind of early to start worrying about it?
MS: How can it not be, for anyone who faces up to the facts of life? It's in there somewhat. But when I go to those places, it makes me feel better about everything. At least I acknowledge that I'm not going to live forever, and that I'm not super-young anymore. I'm not saying I'm the oldest person around - I still feel young - but if you're a self-aware person, you realize what's happening in your life.
O: You've packaged In Reverse with a painting by Margaret Keane. Is your interest in her work part of a desire to capture that nostalgia of childhood?
MS: That's interesting. My wife and I collect a lot of her artwork, as well as the work of a lot of the people who've copied her style. We've become crazy about that whole world of these painters that existed then. We collect stuff by a lot of other artists, too - all in the "big eye" category. We're actually starting to write a book about all the artists in this trend and compile them in one place for the first time. We have a book agent in New York, and we're slowly writing the book. The paintings are partly about that innocence, but, especially in Keane's stuff, there's also a spacey mystical quality that feels sort of pure to me. Collecting art has been a very valuable thing for me in terms of thinking about what I do. The more I can make things that make me happy, the more I'll be an artist with an identity.
Onstage, January 2000
Matthew Sweet's first tour in two years features lower volume and tighter harmonies
By David Simons
He's been charting records since the beginning of the '90s, but guitarist-songwriter Matthew Sweet has a road record nearly twice as long. Years before he made his mark on America's pop consciousness, Sweet had already been tearing up the countryside in numerous configurations - initially as a sideman to Athens popster Lynda Stipe in the early '80s, later providing guitar backup for songwriter Lloyd Cole. In between, Sweet managed to rack up a bunch of miles in support of a pair of uneventful major label efforts (1986's Inside and 1988's Earth). By the time he figured out the perfect formula on the landmark CD Girlfriend in 1991, Sweet was already a venue veteran.
Though he has not achieved a megamainstream brand of popularity, Sweet has nevertheless become one of the most influential pop rockers of the decade, having helped launch the era of dry, compressed, guitar-heavy rock with Girlfriend's captivating tracks "Divine Intervention," "I've Been Waiting," and "Evangeline." Girlfriend, along with 1995's 100% Fun, eventually slithered into gold-record status, ensuring Sweet regular rotation on modern-rock and college radio playlists.
Ultimately, Sweet is a creature of the studio, the place where he gets to channel his overflow of musical ideas into a working demo or brand-new album. A skilled guitarist, bassist, vocalist, and piano man, Sweet is capable of crafting his works in solitude. And because of that musical dexterity, he can avoid close contact with other musical life-forms for a prolonged period, if he so chooses.
Due to a record label shake-up, Sweet found himself with more than the usual allotment of free time since the completion of his Blue Sky on Mars tour in 1997. Sweet used the hiatus as an opportunity to rethink his '90s recording methodology. Eventually, his deviation took the form of a musical tribute to the live, large-group studio crafting of Phil Sepctor (and later Brian Wilson).
After banging out piles of new songs and test-driving them in his fully equipped home studio, Sweet entered Cello Studios and began compiling his fifth album of the '90s. The centerpiece of In Reverse is a quartet of tunes featuring 17 of Sweet's musical associates performing together as a single live unit, with each song doused in natural echo-chamber reverb for added effect. It's a sound generations removed from the raw, distorted style Sweet helped establish.
"I just wanted to get back to that era when people just sat down and performed everything live, as one large band," says Sweet. "And in order to do that, I had to go 'in reverse,' literally."
Ready to embark on his first round of gigging in support of In Reverse, Sweet finds himself reassessing his onstage delivery as well. Sweet's shows have been notoriously high-voltage affairs, and Sweet - now in his mid-30s - carries the battle scars of his alternative-era stewardship in the form of a noticeably affected left ear (the result of chronic guitar-amp overexposure). In addition to rolling off the volume slightly, Sweet has taken steps to ensure that the multi-instrument "live" feel of In Reverse could withstand a prolonged road trip, adding a sixth band member and giving extra attention to the record's Wilsonesque harmony parts.
On the afternoon that his band begins rehearsals for the 19-city In Reverse tour, Sweet reflects on his years of worldwide venue hopping, as well as on the road that lies ahead. "It can be really intense," muses Sweet. "But I think we're going to be a pretty tight unit this time around."
Are you sufficiently geared up for touring after the prolonged break?
I'm really psyched about it, especially because it's been so long for me. It's exciting to think I've gotta stand up there now and do these songs! But it's nonstop: you go from the rehearsals right into some radio shows, then it's on to the tour, and you just keep going. It's pretty brutal, even though our first one is a relatively short tour.
You have a new album featuring some bigger, more intricately assembled songs. Are you doing things any differently on stage as a result?
It's funny; at first I worried about what it was going to be like to try to do these songs live, but now they feel really natural to play. So it's not going to be that hard to get the right vibe because it's really in the songs and the arrangements. We needed to make sure the background vocals were happening because some of these songs are really made of those vocals. And we needed to have a dedicated keyboard person as well. So we have a six-member band to take out. It's not like the 17 people playing together at once on In Reverse, but it still sounds a lot bigger than just 4.
Besides the obvious "hits," how do you decide which songs from your backlog get dusted off for concert play?
Usually it's just the tone of an individual record that might give it "featured" space on a set list. For instance, this time around we're doing at least as much from my last record [Blue Sky on Mars] as anything else - which you might think no one would really care about, but they just seemed kind of youthful in the set. We just needed that "up" sort of stuff. There's a lot of Girlfriend-era stuff, just because there are so many favorites from back then. At this point it's fun, because now there are lots of records to pull from, which is more material than we could really do anyway. But it's fun to try to cover most of them.
As a result, you're not doing as many of the out-of-the-blue covers that you used to pull out of your hat near the end of the shows.
Especially during the Girlfriend-era, when I didn't have the backlog I do now. I'd do things like "Pretend We're Dead" by L7, or some such thing that I'd try for the first time after hearing it that afternoon! I might still like to do one occasionally, but as I've done more and more records it becomes harder to give up that space.
You've done supercharged renditions of things like "Mr. Soul" and "She Said She Said" in the past. What have been some of your other favorite cover ideas over the years?
We used to do Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" when Ivan Julian was on lead guitar - which I always considered the anthem for my generation. We tried the Stones' "Sway," some Dwight Twilley stu ff, and music from Valley of the Dolls. Anything that had a twist.
Some of your very meticulously arranged backup harmony parts - which you overdubbed yourself - don't always figure into the live versions. Are they just too tough to tackle?
I sort of hard a lackadaisical attitude about that: I didn't always want to bring out a troupe of background vocalists, nor have I picked my band members on their ability to sing like me! We've tried to address it, and actually the last time out we did those harmonies much better than ever. But before that we had a tendency to lean more into the rock side of things - loud, electric shows, where everything was even more electric than it ever was on my record.
That's been one of the interesting aspects of your shows - someone hears "I've Been Waiting" on the radio, finds it light and tuneful, then shows up to your concert and gets blasted by "Giving It Back."
I know. Brian Wilson was one of those people. He came to see one of my shows once, which was great, but eventually he had to flee the volume.
Especially early on, you were playing Beatle-ish pop, but delivering it with punk-style voltage.
Mostly because my early success came out of that mosh-pit era, when college kids just wanted to hear very loud music. Of course, as my audience got a little older, I felt more pressure to have it be more like the records, to try to cover more of that side of myself. Now with the extra voice and the dedicated keyboard player who can play extra guitar parts, I'm about as elaborate as I've ever been.
Does that also mean less volume than we're used to hearing at a Matthew Sweet show?
It actually got to the point where I was hearing more negativity about the volume level than people being into it. Besides the fact that I'm sort of deaf in my left ear [laughs], I guess I feel like I want to come through and do a great live show where you really hear the vocals well and all the other details of the music. I guess that probably means playing more quietly than I have in the past, especially when it was driving people nuts. Although we had already scaled back the volume on the Blue Sky tour. Having said that, we're still going to rock out and be loud, rather than go out and do something totally lightweight. I mean, that's part of the expression of playing live for me - which is being able to really crank up and make some noise.
What are some typical sound issues you might encounter while playing a tour of smaller venues?
Oftentimes you're fighting with a terrible P.A., so you can't get your vocals over the band. This has probably been the biggest problem I've ever had, especially since I've never really graduated to the bigger venues. Once you get into those places you can play very loud on stage, because it'll be puny comparison. Unfortunately, the opposite holds true for small clubs.
You'd tried in-ear monitors during the 100% Fun tour, but not the last time out. Were they not working out for you?
I started using them toward the end of that tour, when we were having a lot of problems with volume and I wasn't able to hear myself that well. But then on the last tour I came to the conclusion that they inhibited me too much. There were always too many things to worry about: making sure the transmitter was working right, getting it all ready, then wondering if the battery was going to die midshow. I just didn't feel like I ever got that comfortable with it.
Do you have your own monitor system now?
I have a dedicated guy for the monitor on this tour, but I've never brought my own monitors and carried them around. I probably should have ten times over because the good, expensive monitors with a lot of power are a great thing to have, and that's the thing that usually gives you the most trouble when using club P.A.s. But you never can tell - half the time the club monitor systems will be just fine, in which case it would have been overkill to lug around a system like that. What I do know is that the times I've been on bigger tours opening for larger acts in larger sheds, they often have those great monitor systems, and it usually makes all the difference.
So are you doing anything for sound protection in light of your ear problem?
Not really. It's not that bad now - just some frequency loss. I guess if it really became problematic for me, I'd have to start wearing something. Although everybody else in my band already does.
Do you just not like the way things sound with your ears plugged?
Kind of - plus I'm always afraid I'll be an idiot and start yelling out loud because of them.
You have a well-documented aversion to traveling by air. How has that affected your touring?
I never told anybody, "I won't fly," but I'd had so much trouble with flying and I was doing so much of it that when it came time to tour for 100% Fun, my manager just said, "Let's do this one without any flying at all." And it went really, really well mostly because I didn't have that hanging over me during the tour.
So your fear of flying would follow you around, even when you were on the ground?
Yeah - I really hate it, so it starts to get into my life about a week before I have to fly; it's not just when I'm on the plan. And it became a problem because I'd have to take stuff to get on the planes in the first place, and then I'd feel lousy later on trying to do the show. It was bad. I mean, most of your tour travel in the states is by bus anyway - unless you're a really big star, I guess - so I'd just rather sleep on a bus overnight and already be at the place in the morning, rather than be in an airport earlier in the day. Even if I didn't have a problem with flying. Although statistically it's probably much more dangerous being on a tour bus.
You even went so far as to travel by boat the last time you toured Europe, right?
I took the Queen Elizabeth II one time to England and back - but in certain ways I found that more horrifying than flying!
You know you've run into a die-hard Beatlemaniac when you get a load of Matthew Sweet's onstage arsenal, which includes his Lennonesque Epiphone Casino (circa '67), a very Harrison-like Gretsch Country Gentleman (reissue model), and, from time to time, Sweet's Vox AC-30, the ultimate Fab amp. Sweet's also been in the habit of carting around his old reliable JCM-800 Marshall half stack as well.
Lately Sweet's been trying to scale back the onstage decibel output, a situation that called for a reduction in amp size. Volume's one thing, but Sweet wasn't about to trade in tone as well - which meant he needed something compact that sounded big at the same time.
"The best sound you can possibly get is from a no-master-volume amp turned up very loud," says Sweet. "Unfortunately, that kind of amp is often too loud to use in certain situations. Which has been my problem with the Vox amps - I love them, but in order to get that great sound out of them, you have to really crank it up, which doesn't always work when you're in a small club. Plus the AC-30 tends to be very bright and loud on stage anyway. So I've tried to find amps that would give me that authentic sound I like, but at the same time not be so glaringly loud."
Sweet found his answer by procuring a couple of Budda amps, including the highly portable Twinmaster, which comes stocked with EL84 power tubes. "It intrigued me because it had the concept of the AC-30, except that it's about half the size of the Vox," says Sweet, who also snared a Stringmaster half stack as well. "That one comes with various modes of distortion that I really liked," says Sweet. "Best of all, those amps aren't totally dependent on being all the way up to get the good sound."
Sweet gets his quota of crunch with help from a Way Huge Swollen Pickle stompbox (which got a regular workout on Blue Sky on Mars). In order to emulate some of the loopy guitar sounds of In Reverse, the Sweet shows feature the Boomerang backward emulator (which guitarist Pete Phillips makes liberal use of). Sweet has been practicing hard at the tricky Snarling Dog Erogenous Moan backtracking device.
"No one else I know can really sit down with it and use it at all - but for some reason, I'm really good with it," says Sweet. "But Pete's had a lot of luck using my Boomerang pedal to do live backward lead. That one seems to work the best of anything."
National Post, February 5, 2000
The pop musician talks to Jane L. Thompson about kitschy paintings and the facts of life. His most recent CD is In Reverse
Were you in the band in high school?
By the time I was in high school, I played in cover bands. When I was 13, I was playing in bands with kids in college; British new wave covers like The Jam, the Buzzcocks, and 60's bands like The Who. We'd make pretty good money playing clubs and bars. I did get to go into clubs when I was well underage - people would look the other way. My mom was pretty worried about me being with older kids and being out late. So we had a bit of friction about it, but in general my parents were pretty supportive.
Do you remember when you first learned about the facts of life?
Pretty early on. I was a very romantic young person, let's say that. I was very in love with being in love, and I actually got married very young, when I was 19. I was married for six years, until I was 25. I learned a lot about relationships. I got divorced at 25. I'm married very happily now.
What kind of car do you drive in LA?
I have a 1970 Dodge Challenger, purple metallic. Our every day car is a Nissan Pathfinder, a dark blue.
Do you have any hobbies?
My wife and I collect art from a really specific era of the early 60's; kitschy big-eyes kid art. We've collected prints over the years, and in the past couple of years have gotten into searching out where all the original art from these artists is. We're slowly cataloguing and building a collection of original stuff by Margaret Keane, who actually did the painting that's on MY album cover - a painting from 1963 that's part of our collection. I chose a painting that wasn't really specifically in the style. The stuff that is, it's a kind of love or hate thing. On MY record cover, I didn't want it to be something that would be off-putting. The picture is not so much in the big-eye style that Keane painted for her husband Walter, who claimed to be the artist at that time. Margaret actually painted all of the art, and her style was more elongated. I just thought [the album cover painting] was a beautiful millennium girl. The art was just so uncharted; as we started to find things, it kind of fuelled our interest in the artist. We hope to publish a book on the genre as well because we've learned so much. We probably have somewhere between 80 and 100 original oil paintings by all the different print artists. The paintings are all over our house. We have different rooms for the different artists. It really is part of pop culture. It's something we've done just because we like the art; we don't expect it to be worth a lot, but we suspect that it might be.
Tennessean, March 30, 2000
While Matthew Sweet was crafting his latest album, In Reverse, in
early 1998, the climate for his melodic,
guitar-driven rock was very good. Such acts as Fastball and Semisonic, both
of whom are cut from the same sonic cloth as Sweet, were lodged at or near
the top of the alternative charts.
Much has changed over the past year. Fickle alternative radio has embraced
heavy acts, which complement their sound with urban elements, such as rapping
and drum loops. Sweet, who plays Sunday at 328 Performance Hall in Nashville,
and his peers have been pushed so far aside, it wouldn't be surprising if
the old-fashioned organic music they make qualifies them as the new millennium's
equivalent of late 20th-century jazz musicians.
"That's funny, because I think about us in that way all the time,"
Sweet says. "Maybe we will be like the old jazz guys playing an old
style of music. That's all right with me, because I'm not going to jump
on a trend. It seems like everyone is using drum loops or grooves to fit
in. I'm fine with having a drummer actually playing the drums behind me.
I'm not going to follow trends like so many other people do."
That's also amusing, since most of the recording artists on Sweet's new
label Jive, home to Britney Spears, 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys, live by
trends. Jive, which is primarily pop and urban artists, started its rock
division by buying Sweet's contract from his defunct Volcano/Zoo label.
"I know I'm pretty different than just about everybody else on the
roster, and that's all right with me," Sweet says. "The bottom
line is that Jive is willing to work the record and they seem committed
to that. The last thing I want to be is lost in a shuffle at a label, and
that won't happen at Jive. I'm pleased that they're going to do all they
can to make this album hit a lot of people."
In Reverse, released last autumn, deserves to be worked. The disc
is quintessential Sweet. It's loaded with pop and rock confections. Huge
hooks abound, and the production is inspired by Phil Spector's Wall of Sound
work. "I wanted to make an album that you could play again and again,"
Sweet says, "so the production aspect was very important to me."
The disc mines the fertile terrain that yielded two of Sweet's best efforts,
1991's terrific Girlfriend and 1995's commercially successful but
under-heralded 100 Percent Fun. "The reviews of In Reverse
have been the best I've ever had," Sweet says. "It's nice to be
well received, but I have to work as much as I can and get the word out
about this album."
Even though the disc has been out since October, if Jive is committed, then
maybe it still can break. It took more than a year for such breakthrough
albums as Sheryl Crow's Tuesday Night Music Club and Jewel's Pieces
of You to chart. Sweet is certainly doing his part granting a plethora
of interviews and touring relentlessly.
"What I'm doing is not a great hardship," Sweet says. "I
love playing out as much as I can."
Matthew Sweet and his wife have stocked their home in the Hollywood hills with colorful kitsch from the 1960s and the vivid art of painter Margaret Keane. Neatly lined up in the kitchen are metal lunchboxes with pictures of pop stars like the Partridge Family.
The rock singer has proven as adept in recreating a sound from that era as he has in the look - enough to make one of his role models cry.
For four songs on his album, In Reverse, Sweet updated producer Phil Spector's legendary Wall of Sound for a new generation. He wanted to capture the heavily orchestrated, yet emotionally raw vibe of songs like "Be My Baby" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling."
Among the musicians he invited was Carol Kaye, who played at several Spector sessions. Sweet learned to play bass guitar as a youngster by reading one of Kaye's instruction books. He knew he had found what he was seeking when Kaye's tears flowed.
"She said, 'I never thought I'd hear this sound again,"' he said.
The Spector sessions were but one of several bold choices Sweet made. The album, drenched in psychedelia, is a loose concept disc about seeing your life pass before your eyes. It's filled with backward tapes of instruments and even the CD booklet is printed in reverse.
And it ends with a nearly 10-minute mini-opera, called "Thunderstorm," that combines what had been four separate songs.
They're the kind of audacious steps that could have backfired. That all of them work, even spectacularly in spots, is a tribute to his warm-hearted songcraft.
The song, "If Time Permits," is the best of Sweet's Spectorlike sessions, a romantic ballad greatly aided by Kaye's expressive bass guitar.
"People talked about it being a single for a while, which sounded very cool," he said. "But I thought, 'Where? What year? What radio network?"'
Where, indeed. Sweet is making melodic rock at a time few people seem to be listening to melodic rock. It's his best sustained work since 1992's Girlfriend, which essentially started the Nebraska native's career.
He wrote about pop music's current obsession with hit singles in "Write Your Own Song," a bitter blast that he described as "a kind of 'Go Your Own Way' type of song - you write your song and I'll write mine."
Sweet got off the grueling cycle of albums and concert tours, taking some time off and hiking in the hills around his home while writing In Reverse.
"I think it was important for me to go so long that I lost any conception of whether anybody would care, so then I just did what I felt like doing," he said.
Conversations with Kaye led to the theme that pulls the album together. She's in her mid-60s, but told Sweet how she was feeling better than she ever has. It got Sweet, who's 35, to thinking about being at the midpoint in life.
"I thought of this disorienting feeling of being pulled back through your life, and feeling again some of the things you weren't in touch with," he said. "It's a hard concept to sort of grasp onto. I just wanted it to be a little trippy and weird, a little like Alice in Wonderland."
In the album's kickoff song, "Millennium Blues," Sweet sings about "living half in one (millennium) and half in the other." Trumpets and trombones fed through a tape and then played backward convey the odd sensations he was thinking about.
"I love records that are that way," he said. "To me, psychedelics are a way to make a record exotic yet still sound very organic."
The ambitious "Thunderstorm" came from a suggestion by one of his managers. "He kept saying 'mini-operas," he said. "I thought he was saying Minneapolis."
Sweet thought it was somewhat insane for anyone to think about such a vestige of another era. He didn't have any ideas, until he listened to a handful of songs on his demo tape and realized they all had similar nature themes.
"I thought everyone would attack me and make fun of me for doing it," he said. "But I think that it was so earnest and had such a good message of persevering against adversity that in the end, people really liked it. I haven't heard anyone say, 'I hate the mini-opera."'
Those who have heard In Reverse seem to like it; Sweet has received the best reviews of his career. His challenge now is getting the fans who loved Girlfriend to listen to it.
"A lot of them are in different realms of their life where they have kids and don't care about records so much," he said. "I hope that it finds its way to those people. I feel like it's a record that can catch on through the grass roots. The people that do hear the record get really into it."