L. Kent Wolgamott: Things are looking up for Matthew Sweet
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On Tuesday, Matthew Sweet released “Sunshine Lies,” his 10th album, his first solo project since 2004’s Japan-only release of “Kimi Ga Suki” and one of the best records of the Lincoln native’s 22-year career.
It’s also the first record he’s put out since the music industry began falling apart in an avalanche of declining sales. But the sky-is-falling mentality that has infected the biz has had the opposite effect on Sweet.
“I feel as good as I’ve ever felt doing music,” Sweet said. “One good thing for me psychologically is that the more the business has gone down, that little nagging thing (sales pressure) has gone away.”
So Sweet isn’t all that concerned about how many copies of “Sunshine Lies” will sell. It’s being released by Shout! Factory, a small label that specializes in pop culture reissues along with putting out new recordings by artists such as Local H, Jessi Colter and Earlimart.
“With my record on Shout!, if we even kind of sell, everything pays off,” Sweet said. “We’d have to do extra terrible for it not to be a success. The numbers just work out that way.
“If I could sell 100,000 records through Shout!, it would be a massive success for them and me. I remember when albums, if you didn’t sell 100,000 you’d get dropped. With The Thorns (his collaboration with Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins), we sold 180,000, and that was a disappointment — and that was just five years ago. They’d be thrilled with that now.”
In fact, “Sunshine Lies” began as a reaction to the acoustic singer/songwriter Thorns. “It started out as really a rock album, wanting to play electric guitar after doing things acoustic for three years,” Sweet said.
But after he produced the Bridges, a young band, Sweet decided to broaden the sounds on the disc, adding more songs until he came up with a mix that has a direct connection with his best-known work from the early 1990s.
I’ve never made any secret of my friendship with Sweet, who grew up in Lincoln and graduated from Lincoln Southeast High School before moving to Athens, Ga., New Jersey and then settling in Los Angeles about 15 years ago.
Nor should it be any surprise that I like the same music that has influenced Sweet — Big Star and the Byrds, Lindsay Buckingham and Brian Wilson and the ’70s New York guitar punk of Television and the Voidoids from which he has taken guitarists Richard Lloyd and Ivan Julian, respectively.
That, without doubt, means I’m inclined to like his records. But it also means I have a very good idea where those records are coming from and how they compare to his previous efforts.
Sweet is generally pushed by critics into the category of “power pop,” which today has nothing to do with either power or pop. Pop music today comes from the Mariah Carey school of screeching or teen-aimed R&B and hip-hop, not the ’60s-rooted melodic sounds that inspired the tag. And power here only implies loud electric guitars.
That category, however, is too narrow to describe Sweet’s music — a swirling combination of beautiful melodies and harmonies, taut, driving guitars and backbeat-rooted rhythms.
In the press release for “Sunshine Lies,” Sweet calls it “power-pop-folk-rock-psychedelia-melodic-singer-songwriter-type stuff.”
That’s good enough for me — except for one addition. When I talked to him, he said, “The whole thing has a lot of energy and layers. I think of it as sort of a healthy album.”
By healthy, I think Sweet’s referring to a positive tone that pervades the record, whether he’s getting romantic on “Pleasure is Mine” or expressing the desire to plug in and rock out on “Room to Rock.”
As is always the case, there are some real gems on “Sunshine Lies.” My favorites after about a half dozen listens are “Room to Rock,” the shimmering “Byrdsgirl,” which pays homage to, you guessed it, The Byrds, the pure pop of the “Feel Fear,” which reminds me of Wilson, and the rocking “Let’s Love.”
As has been the case of late, Sweet recorded and produced “Sunshine Lies” at his Lolina Green Studio, playing many of the instruments himself while bringing in his team of Lloyd, Julian, longtime drummer Ric Menck and L.A. go-to steel/slide guitarist Greg Leisz. His engineering/production/arranging skills have clearly increased, making “Sunshine Lies” a lush, layered, perpetually satisfying listen.
It also has some very cool artwork of macro shots of raindrops and insects that Sweet says look great on the large gatefold cover of the vinyl LP version of the record that’s being released in a limited edition.
The irony, of course, is that Sweet started his career on vinyl.
“In ’86, when my first record came out, you didn’t get to have CDs unless it was selling really big, which mine didn’t,” he said. “My next record, at A&M, it was half and half and the singles were 12-inch records. By the time of ‘Girlfriend,’ it was all CD …”
“I like that I came before the Internet. It feels like this earlier, magical time.”
But he’s not living in the past. Like all artists today, he’s working at presenting his music in multiple ways, with a song in an Eddie Murphy movie here and teaming up with Hoffs for another version of “Under the Covers,” this time of ’70s songs, and in becoming a background singing team.
Early this year, they added harmonies to “Little Rock Star,” a six-minute song that will be on “Little Honey,” the new record that Lucinda Williams will release in October.
Sweet and his road band played four shows in California this week — he was in the midst of “kamikaze rehearsals” when we talked. Then they’ll tour in October, but come no closer to Nebraska than Boulder, Colo., and Minneapolis.
“We’re hoping I can make it where all of us guys can get on a bus and tour,” he said. “I don’t want to be on the road again in a van, ever. We think we’re going to be able to do it, and if we can, we’ll tour some more, and I’m sure we’ll be coming to Lincoln then.”
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
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