Graham Reid | | 1 min read
Girl with Cat
And here's an object lesson in effortless power pop from a master.
Elsewhere never apologises for loving this idiom which peels off slivers of pre-66 Beatles and Byrds, has a lineage in Big Star, Badfinger, Cheap Trick, early Petty and the Posies and comes right up to . . .
Just so many good people.
Matthew Sweet has had digressions off piste on three covers albums with Susanna Hoffs (of power poppers the Bangles) but lately he's back on the mainline with songs which are instantly familiar (jangle, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar solo, chorus to fade)
His previous album was a double-disc Tomorrow Forever funded by Kickstarter 2014 and eventually released last year. The reason for the delay was he is just so damn prolific he crammed 17 songs onto that album and the dozen songs on this one are apparently his demos left over.
But as anyone who has collected Sweet's other demos, outtakes and live album material (where he tears up songs by Neil Young among others) know that there's always something rare and special to be discovered.
He's still on a similar track (he even references “eight days a week” on the ballad Something Someone) and heartbreak, difficult love or departure are his over-riding themes, but he parlays it so well across these diverse songs (country power pop to downbeat lo-power pop), and with a cast of unfamiliar guests in the studio.
Sweet fans will now what to expect, those who've not encountered him might be better to head for his cornerstone albums like Girlfriend (one of our Essential Elsewhere items) and Altered Beast in the early Nineties then play catch-up if they care to.
Catchy as ever.
post a comment