"I want to make a difference," says Matthew Sweet, his enthusiasm
keen and level, a voice that speaks for a new generation of young American
singers and songwriters. Their work is attracting the attention of rock's
most discerning producers, and Matthew finds musical scenarios opening for
him that were once only a dream.
Inside, his first album for Columbia Records, is a recording whose
only intention, according to Matthew, is "to get music back to a more
honest, special kind of communication, learning to be more concise and pare
down my melodies for the people who'll really feel personally attached to
it. Those are ultimately the people I care about." These beliefs carried
the album's sessions into studios in London, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Everywhere he recorded, Matthew enjoyed a unique advantage - working with
producers and musicians who embraced his material as if it were their own.
This is capsulized in "Save Time For Me," the first single, which Matthew co-wrote with Jules Shear, and which was also the very first track recorded for the album. It was produced by Alan Tarney between assignments with Dream Academy and a-ha, simply off the strength of a song demo that so intrigued Tarney that he found the time to work with Matthew where time didn't really exist. The two played all the instruments, it was recorded in a day, mixed another day, and Matthew plunged into a schedule that would occupy him body and soul for at least the next half-year of his life.
And were it not for his vision of what the album should be, and the invaluable experiences that occurred during its creation - from hearing the Beach Boy's Pet Sounds for the first time, for example, to working with Scitti Politti's master of synthesized drum programming Fred Maher on several tracks - Matthew's own musical revelations would not be nearly as exciting.
"I have a rootless musical background," says the artist celebrating his 22nd birthday just a couple of weeks after his LP's release. "I didn't listen to the radio or rock records until I was pretty old, like in sixth grade or something. I didn't grow up on the Beatles or Brian Wilson or any of that. When I started to play music and write songs, I was listening to Generation X and the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello, because when I got to be 15 or 16, that all started happening."
Matthew Sweet was born October 6, 1964, in the heart of America, Lincoln, Nebraska. His father's ancestors came over at the time of the Mayflower from Wales, it's told; father grew up in a lumber mill family across the border in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and eventually established a reputable law practice in Lincoln after attending University of Nebraska. He met his wife there, from staunch Irish Catholic Rooney and Day stock out in Greeley, and she became a schoolteacher. Matthew has a sister two years older and a brother five years older.
"I remember loving music when I was very young," says Mathew, "they say I was pretty musical then." Still, he hated the piano lessons he was forced into as a child, and preferred his fantasies - science fiction books, dinosaurs, monsters. "I got into astronomy. I knew all about astronomy and all those natural sciences sort of things." His image as an "egghead," an introverted, not-too-social youngster ("I never wanted to go to camp or anything like that") gave way to a very socially interactive change in junior high school when he finally started listening to records. Soon after, "I got a bass guitar, because it was the cheapest one to get. It only had four string so I figured I could learn it quicker." He'd played violin for a couple years earlier, and the confluence of mastering guitar and discovering the Electric Light Orchestra (A New World Record with "Telephone Line" was the first LP he ever bought, 1976) at the onset of the punk rock revolution, turned his life around.
"What really drew me to those musics," he says of groups like ELO and Yes," was the sort of grace and classical elements and the sensitivity of it. In a little way, what I'm doing now stems from a combination of coming into the punk era - where I learned the virtues of short and fast and hard - out of just finding the passages and melodic things I loved." The record stores in Lincoln were surprisingly up-to-date on the latest from England, and the first new wave LP he remembers buying was XTC's "Go 2."
Playing in his first top 40 band in junior high and trying to turn on his mates to songs like "Life In the Greenhouse" made Matthew aware of the rift that was developing between the punk and non-punk elements of teenagers he knew. "The people who were interested in new music were always the more sensitive, more literate kind," he observes. Just as predictably, another rift arose as his more cynical friends put down any music that was even broadly commercial. Once again, Matthew withdrew into a smaller circle of friends. The relationships that would remain with him for the next ten years started there, as he first began getting away from home for long stretches, often travelling 200 miles to play in some bar with college-age kids.
His musical development was swift, practicing the bass in his room five hours a day, moving past Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius. He tried to play every instrument around so he could make multi-track recordings of the songs he was beginning to write. He read New York Rocker, heard every band that came through, and when the TEAC Tascam 4-track recorder came on the market, Matthew was ready. He'd met Michael Stipe at an REM show and they began to exchange tapes. Matthew graduated high school in '83, and chose to attend the University of Georgia at Athens.
"It was this heavy, ancient kind of vibe to the South that was still in Athens," he says of the town that once birthed the B-52s, then REM and Pylon. By October he was in the recording studio with Athens' wunderkind producer Don Dixon. Buzz of Delight, independently released on Athens' DB Records, came out in the spring '84 and within three months Matthew had finished a new demo. The combination of the album and the demo, coupled with an appearance in New York City at the Peppermint Lounge, that caught the attention of A&R man Steve Ralbovsky. Through his perseverance, Matthew obtained an 8-track recording unit for home, and was able to enjoy the artistic freedom he needed to compose new songs. Finally, in December '85, the first sessions commenced in England with Alan Tarney.
Back in New York in January, Dixon came North to work with Litt on "This Above All" (featuring Aimee Mann of "Til Tuesday on backing vocals), "the first track where I had ever used outside musicians to do anything since before I got signed," Matthew notes. In February, Matthew returned to England and two tracks were completed with producer Dave Allen (credits: The Cure, Human League). "Brotherhood," with its refrain of "it's a word I never understood 'til now," transcends literal wordplay and a soft intimacy all its own. "Catch Your Breathe," which Matthew also co-produced, comes closest to the "modern, garage-techno sound" characterized by his contrast of acoustic guitar and drum machine.
While in London, after finishing with Dave Allen, Matthew was introduced to producer Simon Hanhart (credits: Fock of Seagulls, Marillion) and got to record one of his oldest compositions, "Half Asleep." Back in New York, working in the studio Francois Kevorkian, known for his dance-music expertise, and Fred Maher, two more tracks were added to the list, "By Herself" (co-written with Adele Bertei; backing vocals by Valerie Simpson) and "Love I Trusted."
Sessions resumed Park Avenue Sound studios in Massachusetts with producer Steven Hague, who'd once been a member of Jules and the Polar Bears with Jules Shear, and had gone on to considerable success with Rock Steady Crew, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Malcolm McLaren, and Pet Shop Boys. Maher came along for the recording, and "Watch You Walking" and "We Lose Another Day" are the results. Both contain lyrics by Pal Shazar, ex-Slow Children and one-time collaborator with Shear.
The album's only Los Angeles-recorded track happened next with Columbia A&R staff producer Dave Kahne. His experience with the Bangles (RIAA gold for Different Light) was an asset on "Blue Fools" as Debbie and Vicki Peterson join on background vocals. Matthew has described the song as "the 'Norwegian Wood' of the record," written in one of his waking induced dream states while in England.
Recording finished appropriately enough in New York with Scott Litt at the helm for "Quiet Her," the LP's opening track, and most of the Golden Palominos on the session (including Chris Stamey, keyboardist Benie Worrell, drummer Anton Fier and guitarist Jody Harris). "It's supposed to be a harsh, loud, fast, kind of brash song," Matthew explains, "but what it's saying is really a sensitive message."
"I think what music is moving towards is people finding how to get what they need out of a society that's made it impossible for traditional ideas and values to work in the way they always have. What I'm trying to achieve musically is the same kind of thing I think people need to achieve to extend the longevity of the planet in general, in a whole global kind of way. People need to learn to get fun and inspiration and drive out of this thing they've created which is a very mechanical, human-serving kind of machine. But at the same time, learn to find those essential things that keep people from killing each other."
"You can be fast and cool and you can also be a good person. Those are, I think, the things that are important to me personally. And ultimately, what I want to do is communicate my personal self through my music.