MATTHEW SWEET

Reviewed on this page:
The masterly power-pop singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet first emerged in the 1980's, coming from the same Athens, Georgia music scene that spawned R.E.M. He briefly played in an Athens band called Oh-OK with Michael Stipe's sister Lynda. His two '80's albums were overlooked (and are currently out of print), but his 1991 album Girlfriend earned him a considerable following and prominent airplay on radio and MTV. When '90's alternative rock faded, so did Sweet's visibility. But Sweet has kept busy, having been a member of the Thorns (a singer-songwriter supergroup with Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge) and Ming Tea (the backing band for Austin Powers, that is). Sweet has remained quite popular in Japan, and in 2003, he thanked his Japanese fans with a CD that was originally only released in that country.

Sweet's 1986 debut album Inside was an impressive introduction to his talent. His songs about relationships rang true, especially on "We Lose Another Day", "Blue Fools", and "Save Time For Me" (the latter of which was co-written by Sweet and Jules Shear). The album's only problem is that it is dated by its '80's synth-pop sound. (A total of ten -- count 'em, ten -- producers worked on the album, including Scott Litt, Don Dixon, Stephen Hague, and Sweet himself). For this reason, the album is much-maligned, even though much of the material is first-rate. Even on a synth-pop level, Inside is very good, with some songs ("Catch Your Breath", "Love I Trusted") that ought to be on any retro-'80's radio station's playlist. Note: the four songs marked with an asterisk below are currently available on the 2002 release To Understand - The Early Recordings Of Matthew Sweet.

Track Listing:

1. Quiet Her *
2. Blue Fools *
3. We Lose Another Day *
4. Catch Your Breath
5. Half Asleep
6. This Above All
7. Save Time For Me *
8. By Herself
9. Brotherhood
10. Love I Trusted
11. Watch You Walking

Earth, Sweet's sophomore album, is also underrated, though it was a step down from Inside. His songs about love were still evocative; even a song simply titled "Love" sounds profound in Sweet's hands. He also received good support from co-producer Fred Maher and guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine. Most of the songs are warm mid-tempo pop; the only problem is that the album rarely strays from that format. "Underground" and "The Alcohol Talking" are the only songs that deviate from the rest. Although it's not Sweet's best work, Earth is (contrary to popular belief) not half bad. Note: the six songs marked with an asterisk are currently available on To Understand.

Track Listing:

1. Easy *
2. When I Feel Again *
3. Wind And The Sun *
4. Children Of Time (Forever)
5. Love *
6. Vertigo *
7. Underground
8. The Alcohol Talking
9. Vixen
10. How Cool
11. Having A Bad Dream *

Not to be confused with Girlfriend the full-length album, the four-track Girlfriend: the superdeformed CD (or superdeformed EP, if you happened to purchase it on 7-inch red vinyl) contains the title song and three demos as B-sides. One of those is the original version of the title song called "Good Friend", which sounds a bit different than the version that is currently available on To Understand. The other two tracks are worthwhile: "Superdeformed" is a full-bodied alt-rock gem; the more bare-bones "Teenage Female" takes the point of view of a young girl with a crush on a pop idol. Note: the Japanese version of the full-length Girlfriend CD contains these three songs as bonus tracks, as does the 2-CD U.S. reissue of Girlfriend from 2006. Another note on that appears in the next review.

Track Listing:

1. Girlfriend
2. Superdeformed (demo)
3. Teenage Female (demo)
4. Good Friend (demo)

+ =
Sweet's Girlfriend cover art + Neil Young's Zuma cover art = Sweet's Goodfriend cover art
The 13-track CD Goodfriend: Another Take On 'Girlfriend' was a promotional item partly distributed through Sweet's fan club. It contains four songs recorded acoustically in Sweet's house, two that were recorded for the BBC, six live recordings from San Diego State, and one other live recording ("I've Been Waiting") for a Cleveland radio station. Most of these are performances of songs from the Girlfriend album (including two versions of the title track, track 11 being the better one), but two of the high points are cover songs: an acoustic home recording of John Lennon's "Isolation", and a live performance with the Indigo Girls of Neil Young's "Cortez The Killer". Speaking of which, the cover art parodies that of both Sweet's Girlfriend and Neil Young's Zuma, featuring a black-ink drawing of Tuesday Weld and Zuma-like credits and liner notes. Goodfriend is good stuff, and it makes a strong case for Sweet as a live performer, as well as for his ability to perform in intimate settings. (Note: In June 2006, a 2-CD special edition of the Girlfriend album was issued, which featured Goodfriend as its bonus disc).

Track Listing:

1. Divine Intervention *
2. Girlfriend **
3. Day For Night ***
4. Thought I Knew You ***
5. Looking At The Sun *
6. Does She Talk ***
7. You Don't Love Me ***
8. Someone To Pull The Trigger **
9. I've Been Waiting ****
10. Winona *
11. Girlfriend ***
12. Cortez The Killer ***
13. Isolation *

* - recorded acoustically at home 9/8/92
** - recorded in London for BBC1 7/22/92
*** - recorded live at San Diego State 8/28/92
**** - recorded live in Cleveland for WMMS 3/26/92

Altered Beast, the follow-up to Girlfriend, was co-produced by Sweet and Richard Dashut, the man who produced Fleetwood Mac's Rumours. Instead of being a step in a more commercial direction, Altered Beast was an unexpected adventure in risk-taking. "Dinosaur Act" starts the album off with staccato guitar noise; the next two tracks wrap Sweet's brand of power pop in a sonic blanket. Altered Beast is Sweet's darkest work ever. "Someone To Pull The Trigger" and "Falling" make effective use of their metaphors; "Knowing People" and "The Ugly Truth" show a misanthropic streak. "Ugly Truth Rock" is a second version of the latter song that substitutes a harsh guitar sound for the other version's fiddle; it's hardly a conventional song in either form. It may take multiple listenings to be fully appreciated, but Altered Beast is a brilliant, ambitious creation.

The seven track EP Son Of Altered Beast is a useful accessory. It starts with a remix of "Devil With The Green Eyes" that is less turgid and more immediate than the original. The next five tracks were recorded live. The standout among those is "Someone To Pull The Trigger", which was recorded at a different date than the other four; it would do Neil Young & Crazy Horse proud. A live cover of Young's "Don't Cry No Tears" is another track that makes the EP worthwhile. The final track "Ultrasuede" is a studio outtake from the album that is satisfying, and probably would have been better in context.

Track Listings:

ALTERED BEAST

1. Dinosaur Act
2. Devil With The Green Eyes
3. The Ugly Truth
4. Time Capsule
5. Someone To Pull The Trigger
6. Knowing People
7. Life Without You
8. Intro
9. Ugly Truth Rock
10. Do It Again
11. In Too Deep
12. Reaching Out
13. Falling
14. What Do You Know?
15. Evergreen

SON OF ALTERED BEAST

1. Devil With The Green Eyes (remix)
2. Superdeformed (live)
3. Someone To Pull The Trigger (live)
4. Knowing People (live)
5. I Wanted To Tell You (live)
6. Don't Cry No Tears (live)
7. Ultrasuede (studio outtake)

The 1997 album Blue Sky On Mars was one of Sweet's lesser efforts. Its shortcomings had less to do with songwriting than with instrumentation. Some of the material ("Behind The Smile", "Until You Break", "Missing Time") is first-rate. However, most of the musicians that played on Sweet's earlier-'90's albums were absent from this one. Nearly all of the instruments except the drums were played by Sweet and co-producer Brendan O'Brien. Their playing is better than average, but not particularly distinguished. Most of the results sound like fairly typical '90's "alternative" rock, which had not only gone mainstream, but was on its way out of fashion at that point in time. One standout track: "Into Your Drug" reaches out and grabs you with its trippy sound.

Track Listing:

1. Come To California
2. Back To You
3. Where You Get Love
4. Hollow
5. Behind The Smile
6. Until You Break
7. Over It
8. Heaven And Earth
9. All Over My Head
10. Into Your Drug
11. Make Believe
12. Missing Time

The Hourglass Sea is an unessential promo item that surfaced in 1997. Out of its nine tracks, only two are rarities: an acoustic version of "Come To California" and the demo "Vicious Circle". Both are half-decent tracks that also turned up on other in-store promo CDs. None of the other seven tracks are alternate versions (unless you count "Devil With The Green Eyes"; that version is the remix from the Son of Altered Beast EP, not the original from the full-length Altered Beast -- which is fine by me). In essence, The Hourglass Sea merely serves as a mini-compilation of Sweet's studio albums between 1991 and 1997. Not a bad thing to own, but clearly nothing to hunt high and low for.

Track Listing:

1. Girlfriend
2. Evangeline
3. Come To California (acoustic)
4. Devil With The Green Eyes
5. The Ugly Truth
6. Vicious Circle (demo)
7. Sick Of Myself
8. Smog Moon
9. Over It

In Reverse, with its upside-down cover art and back-to-front CD booklet, is a surprisingly old-fashioned effort. Despite song titles such as "Millenium Blues" and "Future Shock", Sweet dropped all pretenses of modern-rock hipness here. Instead, In Reverse is reminiscent of classic pop from the '70's and '60's. Sure, there may be some guitar distortion and nose-thumbing attitude here and there, but that's nothing that his hero Neil Young hadn't been doing for decades. Even the production (credited to Sweet and three others) is relatively old-fangled and carefully avoids excess. Songs such as "Hide" and "Worse To Live" recall mellow '70's pop in the good sense. Some others ("If Time Permits", "I Should Never Have Let You Know") turn the clock back further, to the glory days of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. It all culminates in the closing track "Thunderstorm", a nine-minute, multi-part masterwork that would do Sweet's musical forebears proud.

Track Listing:

1. Millennium Blues
2. If Time Permits
3. Beware My Love
4. Faith In You
5. Hide
6. Future Shock
7. Split Personality
8. I Should Never Have Let You Know
9. Trade Places
10. What Matters
11. Write Your Own Song
12. Worse To Live
13. Untitled
14. Thunderstorm


In 2003, Sweet recorded an album that was originally released only in Japan, as a special gift to his fans in that country. It was made available in the U.S. one year later, in October of 2004. Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu was recorded in Sweet's house, and consisted of 12 songs that he wrote over the course of one week. Sweet also produced, engineered, and mixed the album. The backing band consisted of guitarists Richard Lloyd and Greg Leisz, and drummer Ric Menck (from Velvet Crush), all of whom had played on the Girlfriend album a decade earlier. The title, which Sweet says was intended to be confusing, translates into "I Love You * Life".

Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu proves beyond doubt that Sweet's love for his Japanese fans is genuine. As the description of its making suggests, it's a very spontaneous recording. This provides a strong contrast to most of Sweet's other post-Girlfriend albums, on which he sometimes seemed to be trying too hard. But this album surely doesn't sound like a collection of homemade demos. Most of the album is quite accessible despite a certain excess of sonic noise, which is noticeable but not unpleasant. "Spiral" and the beautiful "Morning Song" sound about as fully realized as can be. The songs are remarkably consistent in quality, with many great pop hooks. Lyrically, "Love Is Gone" and "Through Your Eyes" are as good as any songs Sweet has ever written. The lyrics were not specifically tailored to Japanese interests, although "The Ocean In-Between" is easy to interpret as a metaphor for Sweet's relationship with that country. Instead, Sweet wrote the type of universal songs about relationships that he has always done well, and he was in top form despite the short creative time frame. Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu is one of Sweet's best works.

Track Listing:

1. Dead Smile
2. Morning Song
3. The Ocean In-Between
4. I Love You
5. I Don't Want To Know
6. Warning
7. Spiral
8. Love Is Gone
9. Hear This
10. Wait
11. Tonight We Ride
12. Through Your Eyes

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