Matthew Sweet

Certain Songs #1113: Matthew Sweet – “Millennium Blues”

January 28, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: In Reverse
Year: 1999

Featuring:
Greg Leisz – Electric Guitar
Bruce Fowler – Reverse Trombone
Walt Fowler – Reverse Trumpet
Greg Kurstin – Organ
Ric Menck – Drums

After killing it in the first part of the 1990s with the 1-2-3 punch of Girlfriend, Altered Beast & 100% Fun, Matthew Sweet stumbled for with 1997’s Blue Sky on Mars, which replaced Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd with loads and loads of synthesizers, which was of course a good idea in terms of stretching out, but I didn’t think the songs were quite there to make up for the loss of the fun guitars.

And while the crazy guitars were still mostly MIA from 1999’s In Reverse, Sweet was taking even more risks, ditching the synths for baroque chamber pop psychedelia, which somehow turned it into a record that I wildly overrated at the time, mostly on account of its still stellar opening track, “Millennium Blues.”

Certain Songs #1112: Matthew Sweet – “Smog Moon”

January 27, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: 100% Fun
Year: 1995

Featuring:
Brendan O’Brien – Piano
Greg Leisz – Electric Lap Steel Guitar
Ric Menck – Drums

There are some songs that absolutely bring me back to a specific time and place every single time I hear them. “Smog Moon” is one of those songs.

Certain Songs #1111: Matthew Sweet – “Lost My Mind”

January 26, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: 100% Fun
Year: 1995

Featuring:
Robert Quine – Electric Lead Guitar
Richard Lloyd – Electric Lead Guitar
Brendan O’Brien – Mellotron
Ric Menck – Drums

“But Jim,” you didn’t ask, “you’ve been writing about of these posts about Matthew Sweet songs where he had either Richard Lloyd or Robert Quine play lead guitar, but I’m wondering did they ever play on the same song??”

Certain Songs #1110: Matthew Sweet – “Sick of Myself”

January 25, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: 100% Fun
Year: 1995

Featuring:
Richard Lloyd – Electric Lead Guitar
Brendan O’Brien – Electric Rhythm Guitar
Ric Menck – Drums

Produced by producer d’jour Brendan O’Brien and featuring an absolutely adorable cover photo of young Matthew Sweet listening to an album via some huge headphones, 1995’s 100% Fun definitely felt like a comeback after what I then still felt was the scatteredness of Altered Beast.

Certain Songs #1109: Matthew Sweet – “Speed of Light”

January 24, 2018 by Jim Connelly

B-side, 1993

Featuring:
Robert Quine – Lead Guitar
Byron Berline – Fiddle
Greg Leisz – National Duolian
Fred Maher – Drums

I don’t recall exactly when it was that I came across the treasure trove of Matthew Sweet outtakes and b-sides from the 1990s. Probably at the record swaps at USF in the late 1990s, when I came across a great live recording from 1993 called Shape Shifter and later on a disc of somewhat muddy Girlfriend outtakes called Supervixen.

Certain Songs #1108: Matthew Sweet – “What Do You Know?”

January 23, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Altered Beast
Year: 1993

Featuring:
Robert Quine – Lead Guitar
Greg Leisz – National Duolian, Acoustic Guitar
Pete Thomas – Drums

For all of my initial disappointment in Altered Beast not being Girlfriend Pt. II, it turned out that my favorite songs on it were the ones that sounded the furthest from what I thought I wanted him to sound.

Certain Songs #1107: Matthew Sweet – “The Ugly Truth”

January 22, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Altered Beast
Year: 1993

Featuring:
Robert Quine – Lead Guitar
Byron Berline – Fiddle
Ric Menck – Drums

After the utterly fresh blast of Girlfriend, it was inevitable that Altered Beast was going to be a letdown. So, like its contemporary follow-ups to classic power-pop records, Teenage Fanclub’s Thirteen and The Posies’s Frosting on the Beater, I severely underrated Altered Beast when it came out in 1993.

Certain Songs #1106: Matthew Sweet – “This Moment”

January 21, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sweet Relief – A Benefit for Victoria Williams
Year: 1993

Featuring:
Greg Leisz – Acoustic Guitars, Mandolin, National Duolian Guitar, Pedal Steel
Matt Wallace – Drum Loop

Throughout the early 1990s, you could walk into any record store, go to the “Various Artists” section, close your eyes and grab any random soundtrack album, tribute CD or thematic compilation and it was guaranteed that Matthew Sweet would have a song on it. And not just a song, but a song that wasn’t on any of his other records.

Here’s just a partial list: Born to Choose, No Alternative, Yuletunes, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Saturday Morning (Cartoons Greatest Hits), and of course, perhaps the greatest benefit album of the 1990s, Sweet Relief.

Certain Songs #1105: Matthew Sweet – “Your Sweet Voice”

January 20, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Girlfriend
Year: 1991

Featuring:
Lloyd Cole – Electric Rhythm Guitar
Greg Leisz – Pedal Steel Guitar
Ric Menck – Drums

There were, of course, so many great songs on Girlfriend, it was nearly impossible to figure out which ones to write about. So at various points, I was going to write about the straight up jangle-pop of “I’ve Been Waiting,” the glorious but-mama-that’s-where-the-fun-is chorus of “Looking At The Sun,” but I didn’t wanna do the entire album, no matter how tempting it was.

Certain Songs #1104: Matthew Sweet – “Evangeline”

January 19, 2018 by Jim Connelly

Album: Girlfriend
Year: 1991

Featuring:
Richard Lloyd – Electric Lead Guitar
Ric Menck – Drums

One of the things that came along with Neil Young’s late-1980s / early 1990s renaissance was a whole slew of younger artists paying tribute to him as the so-called “Godfather of Grunge,” but of course it wasn’t just the grunge acts paying tribute to him, but even artists who at least superficially had nothing in common with him.

Like Matthew Sweet, who slyly acknowledged the influence by making the cover of the the Goodfriend demo companion album a riff on Neil Young’s Zuma, the album of hook-filled songs and guitar freakouts that followed the ditch trilogy.