CDNow, October 20, 2000
By Kevin Raub
Singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet seemingly cruised through the '90s - through grunge, pop, and Nu-metal - without a pitfall and even a handful of memorable pop songs.
While greatest hits is a bit of a stretch, Sweet's recently-released retrospective, Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet 1990-2000, makes up for its odd timing with 16 gems and two newly recorded tracks. It was now or never for the guitar pop mainstay, at least if Sweet wanted any say in it.
"It wasn't really like I went, 'Yes, I would like to do my best-of record now,'" laughs Sweet. "It was kind of situation where if I didn't play ball on trying to do it now, I would have to worry about what [Volcano Records] might stick together to capitalize on the catalog so I just decided I would be involved."
So Time Capsule fulfills Sweet's original six-album deal with Zoo/Volcano, setting him free to explore new avenues of recording as well as releasing new music. Regardless of where Sweet's path takes him, don't expect him to do anything other than stick to his alternative pop/rock guns.
"The artists I always lost respect for were the people that blatantly just tried to keep up with the times all the time by jumping on every bandwagon," he says. "Some bands that I really like did that successfully -- the Rolling Stones did Some Girls -- but a lot of my ultimate artists - Neil Young or John Lennon - to me, they were always themselves and always stayed really real and more like what they wanted to do while everything changed around them. For me, I've just never felt like I've belonged in any particular movement and luckily I fit in on some level."
On Time Capsule, Sweet reprises the first three tracks from his 1991 breakthrough, Girlfriend, ("Divine Intervention," "I've Been Waiting," and "Girlfriend") to set the tone for a slew of well-written, time-transcending pop songs, including "Devil with the Green Eyes," "We're the Same," "Sick of Myself," and "Where You Get Love," among others. The sequencing of the record is near perfect, and the greatness of Girlfriend isn't the only thing revisited.
Girlfriend cover girl Tuesday Weld, an actress who has been making films since 1956, graces Time Capsule as well. In short, the circle has rejoined itself. "I was trying to think of what to do for the cover and I remembered those photos which I had in the same batch of Tuesday Weld photos we pulled the Girlfriend one from," explains Sweet. "I remembered the pool shots and always liked them and wished we could use them for something but we never really had a thing we needed to use them for. So I thought it would be a nice bookend to the decade that started with Girlfriend for the cover girl to reprise her role. I was able to relive that fantasy of doing the full Tuesday Weld cover where I didn't have to look at myself at all."
Meanwhile, Sweet has new music set to appear on a slew of tributes, including odes to Ray Davies ("Big Sky"), Paul McCartney, and Robyn Hitchcock (possibly "Madonna of the Wasps"). After that, it's trudge on, record new tracks, and see where the fruits of his labor take him. "I feel like anything can happen. On a certain level its scary, but on another level, it's very liberating. It feels good to be free."
ink 19, February 2001
By Sean Slone
On his 1999 album, In Reverse, Matthew Sweet has a song that seems to sum up what a lot of gifted pop singer-songwriters are going through these days in their battles with increasingly hit-oriented record companies. "Why don't you write your own song/If mine doesn't do it for you," Sweet sings. He talked about the lyric during a late October telephone interview from Los Angeles.
"I think that during that year, before I made In Reverse, I heard a lot of pressure about 'the song.' All they care about is the one hit song, nobody cares about artists. It doesn't matter if you're good or not, it's whether they hear a [hit]. And I heard that so much I think one day I just wrote this nasty payback song about it. It's just a little anthem for my fellow artists and works on kind of another level as well, as a relationship song."
Now the song can also be read as a kiss-off of his own record company. Because as the 2000 release of a greatest hits compilation, Time Capsule would indicate ("Best-Ofs" are often used as end-of-contractual-obligation filler), Sweet is now label-less. This after a decade that began with the much-praised Girlfriend in 1991, and during which Sweet turned out four other consistently good records, all represented on Time Capsule. The record also includes the obligatory two new songs.
Although Sweet had released two solo albums prior to Girlfriend (1986's Inside and 1989's Earth), it was that record that seemed to put everything together. In the reverb-heavy early '90s, the record's dry mixes and guitar-heavy hooks combined with Sweet's meticulously layered vocals were something of a revelation. Sweet's songs of loneliness and godlessness had a loose, garage rock feeling that recalled late period Beatles but seemed somehow out of time as well.
"That was one thing about having to put the "best-of" together is that it forced me to really listen to that record, which I just felt like I knew so well I would never listen to it again," Sweet says. "I think it has a really interesting sound to it... It was really a sort of defiant record compared to my first couple of records. It was just totally how I envisioned it and I was in a real control freak mode at that time. But the songs make it what it is. It always kinda comes down to the songs."
When it came time at the end of 1999 for critics to compile their best of the '90s lists, Girlfriend was an oft-cited choice. Many of Sweet's fans probably still consider that the apex of his career. And Sweet says that doesn't bother him.
"I'm glad to have any record people respect that much. It's funny because on In Reverse, which was really not one of my most successful records, it was the first time I started getting some reviews where people said it was as good as Girlfriend on its own terms. And I got to feel the feeling of people letting it go a little bit. But then to have to put together this "best-of" right after that, I realize why it's an important one."
Sweet's follow-up, 1993's Altered Beast, was a darker, more angst-filled record that seemed to reflect a bit of post-stardom turmoil.
"At the time it was really like it had leprosy and nobody wanted to deal with it and get into it. And sort of people all immediately said 'oh, it's not like Girlfriend.' I guess I expressed a lot of pent-up frustrations in that record."
The somewhat sunnier 100% Fun in 1995 seemed to put things back on track, and allowed Sweet to score one of his biggest hits, "Sick of Myself."
"I think after Altered Beast, I felt like I needed to re-group and make a record that was simple and direct. And I wanted to make sure that it sounded really good because everybody complained that Altered Beast sounded really bad at the time. I guess that's why I started looking around [for] who makes records I think sound really good and that's when I hooked up with [producer] Brendan [O'Brien]... And he was kind of the first person I worked with who really wanted to move as fast as I did and do stuff and get instant gratification."
1997's Blue Sky On Mars, also produced by O'Brien, was more of a do-it-yourself affair. After years of relying on hired hands like ace guitarists Robert Quine (Lou Reed, Richard Hell) and Richard Lloyd (ex-Television), Sweet played all the guitar himself.
"It was supposed to be a really simple, new wave kind of record... and not quite so rooted in the past. And I think in a way it suffered because of that... It was almost like it was unpopular with my old fans to use keyboard sounds and stuff. I noticed in the years after it, there was more stuff that was like that."
But Sweet says the DIY approach on the record suited him well. "In a way I think of myself like I'm a painter or something and I paint paintings that look like me or like I painted them. I'm way more comfortable in a band than I used to be... When we had to start touring for Girlfriend, I would just crank up my amp and close my eyes and go for it. [Now] I'm much more comfortable with a band and doing live shows... But it's much more of a rewarding creative experience when I'm in the demo stage when I'm playing everything myself, creating it from scratch..."
Still, 1999's In Reverse found Sweet going in the opposite direction in the studio and found him again mining the past for inspiration. In an attempt to recreate a Phil Spector wall-of-sound for several tracks, the In Reverse sessions often brought together fifteen or more musicians all playing at the same time in the studio. "It really was kind of a deluxe baroque kind of record. And I certainly feel now that I can only go simpler than that. I don't really want to necessarily go to its extreme unless I did it on a track or two. Because I still hear a Ronettes record on oldies radio or something and it's still so much more extreme than anything we did in that mode. They're just really crazy sounding records."
Although he is often lumped in with other artists like Lenny Kravitz who emulate their musical heroes of the '60s and '70s, Sweet says for him it has always been more about borrowing the spirit and the life of old records than the sounds themselves. "I love the Beatles, but I didn't learn all their songs and how they played and try to do it all exactly like them. I just wanted to be great like them and tried to be inspired by their stuff. And I think that that's the lesson to be learned from old records is the inspiration of it and the feeling of it."
So now Sweet finds himself at a crossroads. "I am just kind of getting into a batch of demos. I am in the unique position for the first time in ten years of being totally free. So I'm trying to enjoy that feeling, pretending I never have to get a record deal or figure out anything about that... I'm sort of reticent to jump right into anything because I just want to think about it long and hard, whether it would be better to go at it in a more kamikaze way or not... I sort of feel like before I go to anybody... I want to write some songs and get a feeling like how I want to be and what I want to do. And then I think it's gonna be easier to know what the right place would be."
Despite his own problems, Sweet remains cautiously optimistic that things will eventually turn around for pop singer-songwriters, and he believes the time may be ripe for some sort of revolution in the music industry.
"I just feel so much dissatisfaction with anyone I talk to, it makes me think it just has to happen. One way or another, there's got to be music like we all knew it to be... It'd just be great to see real, personal kind of music that can be a soundtrack to your life coming back where it's not just a formula. For all I know, kids will cherish their Limp Bizkit or Korn records or Backstreet Boys records or whatever for the rest of their lives. I'm sure they'll have a fond spot for them, but on a certain level it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing we looked for in records... My guess is some young band is going to come along that's real and honest and personal and that will be really rare and different for right now."
The Independant Online, March 7, 2001
By Angie Carlson
In the choppy musical seas - where teen pop and hip hop rule the (air) waves - Matthew Sweet's elaborately produced homage to '60s pop, In Reverse, scarcely made a ripple last year. But it's a gem, an album of rich textures and gorgeous sounds steeped in the studio techniques of Phil Spector and George Martin.
While Sweet has always been highly regarded in the musical community, his profile shot up enormously in the early '90s with Girlfriend, the album that struck a universal nerve, from its Tuesday Weld nymphet album cover to classic songs like "I've Been Waiting" and "Nothing Lasts." You may also have recognized him as a member of Ming Tea, who performed the song "BBC" and appeared in the '60s-mod-cum-Laugh-In "band" snippets interspersed throughout Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. Sweet is a man who's ridden the rock roller coaster through enough hairpin turns and drops that he's learned to live for the moment, to wait through the calms.
Following this college radio and MTV-friendly breakthrough album were a string of more experimental records, yielding Sweet a lower profile in some ways with the record-buying public, a higher one with purists who admired him for turning out the occasional diamond rather than scads of cubic zirconium.
I catch up with Sweet mid-tour; he calls from a Buffalo, New York hotel, having sold out a Tuesday night in Pittsburgh the night before. It's his first jag through the area since the album's release, and his first as a free man, label-wise. "I turned in my 'best of' record and that was the last thing I owed under my contract," he says. While his tour is selling out - with no label push - he's getting airplay for a collaborative song he did "as a lark" with electronic-band Delirium, called "Daylight" ("It'll probably sell way more copies than anything that's actually me," he notes bemusedly). His current band includes Velvet Crush members and longtime cronies Ric Menck and Paul Chastain, who've known Sweet since the early '80s, when vinyl was still king and record junkies like themselves traded cassette tapes of yet-to-be reissued Big Star and Beach Boys recordings.
After struggling two years to free himself from his Zoo Records contract (which got gobbled up by evil teen-pop juggernaut Jive Records), Sweet got the green light to make the album In Reverse. With the label's directive to go in any direction he wanted, Sweet organized the "deluxe" recording session of his dreams, enlisting legendary guitar/bassist Carol Kaye (a session player with everyone from the Righteous Brothers and The Mamas and the Papas to the Beach Boys), Menck and Chastain, guitarist Pete Phillips and a group of session musicians that could recreate - in the studio - the famed Phil Spector "wall of sound." Imagine George Martin standing next to the console in a lab coat, with Spector at his most fly '60s mod, and then have The Byrds or Burrito Brothers stop in for a track or two. From the rococo backwards trumpet flourishes, tape loops and grinding power chords of "Millenium Blues," the album's opener, it's easily Sweet's best since Girlfriend, with lyrics that have the poignancy brought by age and experience.
Sweet refers to In Reverse as a "smorgasbord of different sounds" that he's loved over the years: the Spector-studio approach enhanced by backward tape loops and psychedelic sounds, an amalgam that - as Sweet well knows - never actually co-existed back in the day.
"It is a crazy record, and it's weird that they encouraged me and let me make this record," he says. "It's one of those things where they (the label) think they like it until they put it out and have to sell and promote it." With no promotion behind it, the record--ironically Sweet's most written about work since Girlfriend, sold fewer than any of his previous albums.
Having legendary West Coast '60s session bassist Carol Kaye provided an authenticity to the album's sound: her tracks lend the session an eerie realness that transcends mere homage. "Not only did she have great stories [of famous sessions over the years], but she really vibed on the music," Sweet says. For the portions of the album recorded live with the 15-to 17-piece group, the excitement of hearing a track being created on the spot - an almost extinct concept in these sample friendly days - was a moving experience. "She got teary-eyed listening to the playback on some of those," says Sweet, referring to Kaye.
By coincidence, former Beach Boy Brian Wilson was recording in the next studio. He popped in as they were mixing "I Should Never Have Let You Know," an orchestral ballad replete with harpsichord, organ and theremin. While Sweet paced ("I was horrified - I couldn't be in the room," he says), Wilson tapped along intently. Just as Sweet re-entered the studio, Wilson jumped up from his seat to proclaim, "I love it! I fucking love it!"
Songwise, the odd man out on the record is the rocker "Why Don't You Write Your Own Song," up there with Morrissey's "Frankly Mr. Shankly," as a single-fingered salute to every pontificating critic or well-meaning boob who's ready to offer a musical critique. In other words, it's the song every musician wishes he'd written. Sweet insists it's about a fictional character - a composite. "That song just kind of popped out," he says. "It was like, 'Why don't you fucking write a song, and I can tell you how I don't like it,'" he says, laughing. "My manager was like, 'Uh, I hope you don't feel that way. Everybody thought it was about them.'"
Asked if he's jaded with the music business and the current "niche market" state of rock (according to a recent McPaper spread), Sweet remains hopeful. He had recently been called in to write with teen-dreams Hanson. (Yes, all three of them; they only write as a group.) "They'd just been turned on to stacks of fantastic CDs - stuff we know - Todd Rundgren, Pet Sounds, all those kinds of records," he says. He also mentions getting together to play with Phantom Planet, which features Rushmore's Jason Schwartzman on drums and another teen, Alex, who's sung in Gap commercials. "They're really talented kids - they must be 19 or 20 - and what they're deeply into are these weird Beach Boys records, the early '70s ones, stuff it took us years and years to know even existed," Sweet says, truly impressed.
Of course, everything gets rediscovered. Not just the hits of an era, but the music that bubbled just beneath the surface--the vibrant, more personal sounds you have to dig to find. "It gives me faith that rock music - or power pop, or whatever it is we like - will live," Sweet says.
Well put, Matthew. As long as you keep composing your "teenage symphonies to God," pop - as we know it - will endure.
The Hoya, Friday, March 16, 2001
By David Zahl, Hoya Staff Writer
By definition, singer/songwriters focus more on self-expression than self-promotion. Only rarely do they flaunt any real glamour, generally tending to look more like Bob Dylan and less like David Bowie.
Because presentation usually sells better than content, singer/songwriters rarely hit the top 10 and are forced to release "Best of" compilations instead of "Greatest Hits." The much-acclaimed Matthew Sweet is no exception to this rule: a prodigiously talented artist, rarely seen on MTV’s Total Request Live.
Though seven albums and four different labels, Sweet has consistently pursued the perfect pop song. He’s a rock ’n’ roll classicist, hopelessly hooked to the British Invasion and 1960s California, which is never necessarily a bad trait. His songs alternate between mild rockers, wistful country and touching ballads, with a surprising amount of songs about suicide, "Someone To Pull the Trigger" being the best. Though strict power-pop sometimes leans toward the forgetful, Sweet’s output has aged better than most of his peers.
A retrospective issued earlier this year, Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet evidences this claim. Sweet’s current tour celebrates the occasion of its release, although not explicitly. Before his gig at the 9:30 club on March 7, The Hoya had the pleasure of speaking with the man behind such albums as Girlfriend, 100% Fun and In Reverse. He was cheerful and forthcoming, pretty much the pleasant, slightly nerdy guy one might piece together from his songs.
When asked about the release of Time Capsule, Sweet sounded somewhat ambivalent.
"It’s a rather weird thing to have it [Time Capsule] out, as it’s not something I would have thought of on my own, Sweet said. "It was mainly the label’s idea, though I was involved and got to put two new songs on. Still, it is by no means definitive, something more in depth should come out eventually."
The best retrospectives have a good sense of history. They illustrate the progression of an artist’s career. Concerning his own development, Sweet maintained that if "you listen to my albums, you can see they’re all somewhat different: Girlfriend is straight-up power-pop, Altered Beast is more arty, 100% Fun rocks more, Blue Sky On Mars is my New Wave album. In that sense, I think I’ve changed. At the same time, I’ve always thought of myself as an artist like Neil Young, someone who never became bad because he was always himself. So I’ve tried to stay true to myself and be honest. The songs are the focus, and maybe they’ve gotten better."
Not only are Sweet’s songs consistently tuneful, his lyrics are often very confessional. Like his professed influences (Neil Young, John Lennon, The Kinks), Sweet’s songwriting doubles as therapy.
"That’s what it was in the beginning. When things were bad, I’d hide away in my room and write songs," Sweet said. "The words aren’t necessarily autobiographical, but I like to think the feelings are. Again, music for me is about the songs, and my favorite songs were always the more personal ones."
Singer/songwriters have a knack for being under-appreciated, perhaps because their music is so personal. Their accessibility then depends upon the personality involved. In this sense, bands are easier to like because they are a collection of individuals. With more than one person shouldering the musical responsibility, bands are free to foster richer identities and gain wider appeal. After all, the most successful bands - or at least the most legendary - have always relied on group dynamics, from Mick and Keith to Axl and Slash to the Backstreet Boys. Of course in the case of the latter, the group dynamic is more of a gimmick (and a good one at that).
Sweet admitted to missing the camaraderie being in a band, but remains satisfied being himself. Though he’s excited to record another album, he’s skeptical about releasing it on his own, claiming, "doing it own my own [through the Internet] makes me feel more powerful, but in the end, all roads seem to lead to a label."
Whatever he does, one thing is clear: Matthew Sweet will never be a household name. Like his idols Big Star, Sweet’s ‘should-have-been’ status is attractive. It adds depth to his persona. His fans are devoted and will love him, regardless of his sales. Perhaps the satisfied ring to his voice is the sound of acceptance. After all, Matthew Sweet has made quite a career out of being underrated.