Matthew Sweet is the guy you know got beat up after school in
\nhis teens. He probably never went to prom either and definitely
\nwasn’t the jock hero type. But as a pop icon of the late eighties
\nand nineties, I’d say he’s getting his just desserts.<\/p>\n
Sweet’s strengths as a songwriter rely heavily on his dejected
\npersona which is consumed by love and all its pitfalls coupled with
\nan acerbic wit and some awesome guitar hooks.
\nGirlfriend<\/i>, his 1991 release, features not only some of
\nSweet’s best songwriting , but guest performances by killer
\nguitarist Richard Lloyd, former post-punk guitar god of Television,
\nand Lloyd Cole, another great popster from the UK, who put out some
\nincredible records over the last decade. Lloyd and Cole’s
\nappearances seem appropriate given Matthew Sweet’s affinity for
\nLOUD pop music, at turns sweet and powerful. The inside jacket even
\nadvises listeners “don’t be afraid to play it loud.” Good advice,
\nMatthew.<\/p>\n
Sweet also employs two drummers on this record which works with
\nmoderate success. Ric Menck appears on several cuts, who played
\naround my college town of Champaign-Urbana with several pop bands
\nand later on the East Coast, and also the talented Fred Maher.
\nWhile I always liked Menck’s scrappy, boppy style which works great
\non “Looking at the Sun” and “I’ve Been Waiting”, the more solid
\nrockers like “Evangeline”, based on First Comic’s Evangeline, and
\n“I Wanted to Tell You”, benefit from Maher’s more sturdy and steady
\nbackbeat.<\/p>\n
Themes of love, betrayal and premature parting are interwoven
\nwith Sweet’s appealing, boyish vocals throughout
\nGirlfriend<\/i> . I’ve always enjoyed his rather plaintive vocal
\nstyle because there is so much other cool stuff going on
\ninstrumentally on his records that a stronger, gutsier vocal style
\nwould only detract from the music. “Girlfriend” is a great top 40
\nsong, though it only enjoyed mediocre success on college\/indie
\nradio upon the album’s release. But my favorite pop tune on the
\nalbum is “I’ve Been Waiting” which mixes Sweet’s naturally light
\nvocals with his and Lloyd’s snaking guitar work. Also noteworthy is
\nSweet’s bass work on this tune and especially on “Evangeline” and
\n“I Wanted to Tell You”. Other than as a songwriter, I think his
\nstrengths as a bass player are largely ignored. My fav bass lines
\nalways set the right punctuation mark in a song, a musical comma or
\nexclamation mark so to speak.<\/p>\n
While I’m not one to snub the great pop tunes on this record,
\nand I’d put “I’ve Been Waiting”, “Evangeline” and “Girlfriend” up
\nagainst some of my favorites, it’s the slower ballads that really
\nappeal to me on this record. For some reason, and my friends don’t
\ncall me sentimental, the pleading of “Your Sweet Voice” never fails
\nto choke me up. As the narrator begs his companion to speak to him
\nin her sweet voice, he nevertheless is quite aware that this is “as
\nclose as I get to love” . The title of “You Don’t Love Me” says it
\nall while our hero cries “you don’t love me\/you can’t see how I
\nmatter in this world.” OK, so even I can enjoy a depressing pop
\nstar once in awhile too, OK?<\/p>\n
Clearly, our man is not in the habit of happy love affairs, much
\nless a self-satisfied ego. Adding to this are the interwoven
\nreligious overtones throughout the record. I don’t think this
\ndetracts from the record, but only supports Sweet’s questioning of
\nlove, life and perhaps God’s existence in a song like “Holy War”
\nwhere Sweet complains “Cause I’m not in for killing another man,\/
\ndefending my holy land\/as if there’s a God who would understand.”
\nOh happy days. Perhaps the album’s dedication to the “memory of
\nBarbara Douglas” coupled with the bust-up of Sweet’s marriage at
\nthe time helped set the somewhat dour mood within some of his songs
\non
\nGirlfriend<\/i>.<\/p>\n
I think another thing I find so appealing about Matthew Sweet is
\nhis true love for all things related to the sixties. The guitars,
\nthe song themes, even the affinity to his childhood memories like
\ncomic books and TV stars, is something some of us, ahem, “aging”
\nbaby boomers can relate to without feeling totally unhip. So the
\ncast of today’s trendy television shows may have brought back the
\nbad seventies fashion and all its inherent crap, but let’s face it:
\nthe sixties had cooler TV, cooler fashion (which is why designers
\nrecycle it, oh, every 3 years or so), and definitely cooler music.
\nIf you’re gonna like retro, at least make it during the cool
\ndecade, kids!<\/p>\n
From the cover photo of Tuesday Weld and the inherent 60’s pop
\nfeel of this record, there is a hopeful note within Sweet’s music.
\nThat hope for a better place and time was a driving force behind
\nthe counterculture movement of the sixties and may be why Sweet has
\nso successfully made a good record with
\nGirlfriend<\/i> as his musical stance is so firmly embedded in
\nthat era. I only hope that his dreams become realized and make for
\na really happy record sometime in the not so distant future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":24616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5888],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-35820","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-matthew-sweet","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35820"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35820"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}