Rating: 5 Stars
By Redmund Law
For those new to Matthew Sweet, here is an artist who has consistently, over the last 10 years, produced the most engaging of pop music. You could easily classify him under guitar-based power pop, but that would be limiting his genius. This greatest hits package (with two new songs) is an ideal way to get acquainted with the man's body of work.
Sweet's brand of music is heavily dependant on killer hooks and power chords dressed with his own inimitable multi-tracked vocals. The collection is chronological with tracks spanning Sweet's six releases over the past decade. From "Altered Beast" comes the introspective acoustic strains of "Time Capsule" and "The Ugly Truth"; "Someone To Pull The Trigger" from the mini-album Son Of Altered Beast; while the more jaunty 100% Fun masks the darker undercurrents in the songs' lyrical intent such as on "Sick Of Myself."
One of the features of Sweet's music is his recurrent use of familiar friends such as drummer Ric Menck from Velvet Crush and the guitar twins Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine. It is in particular the two guitarists who provide the stunning guitar work that embellish so many of Sweet's work, and in the process, define his sound.
Of Sweet's two new tracks, "Ready" and "So Far," the latter is by far the better track. But placed up here with the best of his work, they are swimming in pretty deep waters.
For those who already have all of Sweet's albums, this is a good CD to have as it puts on one disc some of your most treasured moments by him over the last ten years. For those uninitiated, by the time you get to "What Matters," you should want to run out and buy every single album you can find by him. If you don't, check your hearing with your doctor.
Houston Chronicle, Nov 2, 2000
Grade: A-
By Michael D. Clark
GREATEST OPPORTUNITY TAKEN: Matthew Sweet - Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet 90/00 (Volcano)
Sweet has created some of the best jangle pop never heard and only the most progressive radio stations have given it rotations. Listen to Time Capsule and see what's been missed.
Steeped in songwriting apostles like Elvis Costello, John Lennon and Brian Wilson, Time Capsule smartly skips Sweet's first two raw albums, cutting right to 1991's critically hailed Girlfriend. "Sick of Myself,'' "Devil With Green Eyes'' and all of his finest tailored stories are included.
Associated Press, Nov. 7, 2000
By James Reindl, AP Writer
Fans can always argue with the selections that make up an artist's best-of
compilations. So it no doubt is with popster Matthew Sweet. What's most
significant about Time Capsule is that eight of the 18 songs are
from the first album to blast him into public consciousness and its follow-up.
It's long been acknowledged that Girlfriend, Sweet's third album,
released in 1990, is perhaps his best (Time Capsule gets around the
first two with the 90/00 label).
Girlfriend introduced his power pop sound and from-the-heart truthfulness
about love and other matters. Judging across time, Sweet found a groove
and has mined it deeply. He is capable of beautiful ballads, represented
here by "Until You Break," quick pop ditties ("We're the
Same") and rough-and-tumble rockers ("Devil With the Green Eyes").
Time Capsule provides the uninitiated with a good introduction to one
of the 1990s' less celebrated pop stars.
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South Bend Tribune, November 17, 2000
By Andrew S. Hughes
It was only after I moved to Indiana that I learned very few other people
had heard of Marshall Crenshaw, the man behind several of my favorite singles
of the early '80s.
Just before and after the 1982 release of Crenshaw's debut album, he
was a popular club act in New York, and the area's major rock stations,
especially WNEW-FM, awarded the album and its singles plenty of airplay.
Out in the suburbs of Jersey, I was listening, and Crenshaw's back-to-basics
rock 'n' roll connected with me and my appetite for catchy pop melodies
and crisp guitar riffs.
As it turns out, few other stations around the country paid any attention
to Crenshaw's music. While I thought "Someday, Someway," "Cynical
Girl" and - from 1983's Field Day - "Whenever You're on
My Mind" were hits everywhere,
Crenshaw never rose above cult status, with pockets of support here and
there, but never any national recognition.
At least I've since had the pleasure of introducing friends to what they
missed out on in the early '80s, and that's a lot easier now, thanks to
"This Is Easy: The Best of Marshall Crenshaw.
After those first few singles, however, I lost track of Crenshaw, even as
he continued to record new albums that deepened his sound and tracked his
maturation as a songwriter and singer. "This Is Easy" not only
compiles Crenshaw's best early work -- including the wickedly cheery B-side
"You're My Favorite Waste of Time" -- but also the best from the
rest of the '80s and into
the '90s.
Those songs - "Little Wild One [No. 5]," "Like a Vague Memory"
and "Calling Out For Love [At Crying Time]" -- substitute some
of the exuberant pop sheen of Crenshaw's earlier songs for a more serious
tone, but they never lose track of his knack for spinning off memorable
guitar riffs. On one of his few covers, he turns in an excellent performance
of John Hiatt's "Someplace Where Love Can't Find Me."
As Crenshaw faded more and more from public view at the start of the '90s,
Matthew Sweet appeared to take his place as a critical darling without a
mass audience. Just as Crenshaw mined the '50s with a freshness and originality
absent in the music of many other '50s revivalists, Sweet drew inspiration
from 1960s pop without losing his own voice in the process of rediscovering
recording practices and sounds from three decades ago.
Sweet started and ended the '90s with two classic albums, 1991's Girlfriend
and 1999's In Reverse. In between, he released three fine albums,
Altered Beast, "100% Fun, and Blue Sky on Mars, that
might not be classics but hold up well as representatives of Sweet's flair
for arranging jangling, riff-driven guitars, bass lines that pop out of
the speaker and exquisite vocal harmonies.
Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet gathers a fair sampling of
the best material from those five albums, as well as one track from the
EP Son of Altered Beast and two new tracks recorded this year for
the compilation.
"So Far" opens with the kick of a mid-'70s hard rock power chord
progression and develops into a sweeping, harmony-filled pop chorus without
losing the muscularity of its opening. "Ready" also recalls the
'70s, with a foot-stompin' rhythm and party-time delivery learned from a
Grand Funk Railroad record.
Also on the subject of compilation albums, Universal has completed its wonderful
reissue program for Stevie Wonder's 1970s albums with the release of 1982's
Original Musiquarium I.
Musiquarium contains all of Wonder's hits from the '70s - "Superstition,"
"You Are the Sunshine of My Life," "Sir Duke" - and
four songs - "Front Line," "Ribbon in the Sky," "That
Girl" and "Do I Do" - that were new when the compilation
first appeared.
If collecting all seven of Wonder's individual albums from the '70s seems
too daunting, Musiquarium should more than suffice as a primer to
this master's finest period.
As for Crenshaw and Sweet, This is Easy and Time Capsule make
it easy to discover two of pop music's best unknowns.
Swizzle-stick.com, November 26, 2000
By James Baumann
Of course, "best of" discs are fairly ridiculous to review. You either like the guy or you don't. If you like him, you should have all the records. If you don't, then use them for coasters. Well, I like Matthew Sweet so go get all his records from Girlfriend (one of the top 10 records of the '90s by my count) to the present. If you want, skip over Blue Sky On Mars. That wouldn't have been a bad idea on this disc as well because, in the interest of equal time for each record, some other tracks like "Evangeline" or "Superdeformed" had to be omitted. But such is the nature of the [altered] beast. Two new tracks are included to lure the diehards. The first, "Ready," is a bouncy pop number in the mind of what can usually be found on a Velvet Crush disc (which isn't surprising, seeing how two Velvet Crushers play on it). The second, "So Far," sounds like it was simply left over from the recording sessions for Sweet's last record.
Entertainment Weekly, December 1, 2000
Rating: A -
By Laura Morgan
Whether delivering feedback-drenched guitar rock or doleful ballads, Sweet's unshackled vulnerability lends even his lesser material intimacy; he's a noble, if doomed, idealist. This retrospective (With two previously unreleased tracks) offers a superb career snapshot. While some may regard Sweet as a one-hit wonder (the jangly "Girlfriend" was an MTV staple in 1991), this chronologically arranged disc shows his knack for crafting timeless power pop has never faltered.
Matthew Sweet, one of the mainstays of early '90s modern rock, rarely turned his critical acclaim into consistent commercial success. This singer-songwriter's comprehensive 18-track retrospective includes many of his disarmingly catchy, alternative pop-rock musings, dating back to his much-praised 1991 breakthrough hit, Girlfriend.
By Heather Phares
One of the most unlikely and endearing successes of the alternative rock
era, Matthew Sweet was - and is - one of the most consistent artists to
come out of that time period.
Compiled by Volcano Records, the same label that released Sweet's 1999 album
In Reverse, Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet collects 16 of
his best-loved songs and two new ones, "Ready" and "So Far."
Not surprisingly, the anthology spends the most time with his strongest
albums, especially his breakthrough, Girlfriend.
A full four songs - "Divine Intervention," "I've Been Waiting,"
"Girlfriend," and "You Don't Love Me" - come from that
1991 classic, but Altered Beast, 100% Fun, Blue Sky on Mars, and
even In Reverse are well represented with songs like "Time Capsule,"
"Sick of Myself," "We're the Same," "Where You
Get Love," and "What Matters." Sweet's vibrant, vulnerable
take on power pop revitalized the genre in the '90s, and this collection
of his work still sounds completely fresh and enjoyable.
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By Stewart Lee
Matthew Sweet writes songs acoustic troubadours would sell their Nick Drake
box sets for, and plays them like a mid-1970s New York punk. Television
and The Voidoids infected his witty wordplay with the spirit of CBGB on
1990's
Girlfriend album and 1993's Altered Beast, both generously
represented here, setting a formula Sweet has mined with diminishing, but
still superb, results since. Crenshaw, Sweet's spiritual forebear, draws
from the neat simplicity of 1950s pop, looking and sounding like a bespectacled
Buddy Holly from the post-punk, skinny-tie-and- sunglasses era. This 20-year
overview, each song sounding like a summer smash, will make you wonder if
all that kept him from the charts was a
failure to purchase contact lenses.
Q, December 2000
By Dave Henderson
In the world of under-rated singer/songwriters, Matthew Sweet is king.Over
the last decade he's released a clutch of albums that boast songs that could
satisfy the fallow periods of Lennon, Young and most points between. Time
Capsule displays his eclectic taste with some panache. Indeed every
song is a loveable feast of melancholy longing, spiced with pin-sharp harmonies,
lonesome steel guitar and heavier riffs when needed. It's a perfect entry
point, which makes revisiting power-pop gems 1992's Girlfriend and
'93's Altered Beast such a treat. Sweet's musical vision became a
little blurred from here on in but, in truth
all the albums listed here are testament to his much-overlooked songwriting
skills.
By Aly Hirji
Of the significant artists to emerge in the Nineties, Matthew Sweet was the odd man out. During a decade which featured cynicism, overstatement and over all mean spiritedness, Sweet captured an audience with subtlety, honesty and unpretentiousness. As a sophisticated aural designer of hip rhythms, Sweet absorbed the works of the Sixties B-bands, The Beatles, Beach Boys and the Byrds. He combined their harmonious styles with the Seventies Rock and Roll avatars, Neil Young and Big Star, to create something uniquely his own. Each of his songs are highly personal and fresh, but with an understated appreciation of the Old Masters.
Sweet is that rare artist who seems directly and intimately knowable through his work; as much as anything, this belief has caused his audience to feel a close bond with him. However, outside of those who have found him and those critics who have sung his praises, Sweet has never enjoyed the commercial notoriety that other bands seem to have found.
With short stints in Oh-OK (with Michael Stipe's sister) and Buzz of Delight, Sweet released his first album in 1986, entitled Inside, which was highly polished but nothing special. He followed this up in 1989 with Earth, which featured dueling guitars, buoyant melodies and drum machines, as he seemed to try and find himself artistically.
Taken as a whole, the five albums he made during the Nineties can be seen as a spiritual ride, a compendium of insights and a neoclassical epic from the decade's preeminent pop formalist. This anthology features these albums, which includes Girlfriend, Altered Beast, 100% Fun, Blue Sky on Mars and In Reverse. It also includes two previously unreleased tracks, "Ready" and "So Far," which although will never garner commercial success exemplifies the rhythmical brilliance of Sweet.
This anthology hits both his few commercial successes, like "Girlfriend," "Time Capsule" and "Devil with the Green Eyes," but also shows the musical and emotional depth with songs like "You Don't Love Me" and "Someone to Pull the Trigger." Unlike other "greatest hits" albums, this anthology succeeds in telling a story; 90/00 tells the story of an artist's coming of age.
By Steve Marshall
Back in the early 90's, grunge was all the rage. By the time Matthew Sweet released his third album, 1991's Girlfriend, there wasn't much room for a power pop musician. But Sweet managed to be able to rock out with the best of them, courtesy of guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine. The album's title track became one of the biggest songs of the alternative era. Jump ahead to 2000. Sweet's records have been somewhat hit or miss in recent years, but he's always managed to come up with a few decent tracks on each one. As with any greatest hits collection, there will always be some debate over which songs are included and which ones aren't. In this case, most of his best material is here, with a few glaring exceptions - "Evangeline" and "In Too Deep."
When I first looked at the track listing on Time Capsule, I was a bit disappointed. But when you listen to it, it's surprisingly consistent. None of the tracks from Sweet's first two records are included. Instead, the disc starts off with four tracks from Girlfriend. Each of his following albums is represented here, plus the obligatory two new songs - "Ready" (which is the better of the two) and "So Far." The things that are missing are the non-LP tracks that have been released over the years. Sweet has always been one to put out singles (both promotional and commercial) with tracks that didn't appear on the albums. His covers of tracks by The Beatles and Neil Young have been consistently good, and there has been an abundance of great B-sides over the years too--none of these appear on Time Capsule.
Still, the CD provides a well-rounded view of Matthew Sweet's post-1991 catalog, and that's what it was meant to do. Time Capsule is a good (but not quite great) overview of one of the 90's best power pop artists. If you're just discovering Matthew Sweet, this is an excellent place to start. Longtime fans may be a little disappointed, but will still find the CD quite enjoyable.