Rockin' Our Turntable: Matthew Sweet

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 23, 2008 5:00PM

Matthew Sweet's latest disc, Sunshine Lies, is a bit of a throwback. Considering Sweet is an artist who consistently mines the AOR past to populate his albums with sunny '70s sing-a-longs, this might seem like an obvious statement, but in this case we mean he's looking back to his personal past. A number of players on this disc also played on Sweet's best album Girlfriend, and it seems fairly obvious that Sunshine Lies is an attempt to recapture some of that magic.

Sweet's last few albums have been hit or miss -- and mostly miss -- affairs heavy on syrupy sentiment and lean on hooks and energy. Sunshine Lies attempts to remedy those problem and regenerate some of the broken and bruised tragic magic that made Sweet's earlier stuff so great. He succeeds in that this is the most exciting and fully realized album he's recorded in almost a decade. Sweet has regained his ability to jam about three thousand hooks into every song, creating an album more dynamic and satisfying than any of his other in recent memory. Unfortunately, he still has his fair share of stumbles along the way. When Sweet stomps on the distortion pedal to deliver his angrier tunes he makes the mistake of burying the guitars and pushing the vocals too prominently in the mix, and the lack of crunch crossed with too much croon deflates songs that should be steamrollers. Miscalculations like that end up robbing the album of its forward momentum by tripping the listener up with its sonic gaffes.

If you can get past minor quibbles like that, though, Sunshine Lies does indicate that Sweet may yet regain his title as the lovelorn troubadour of power-pop.

Matthew Sweet plays tonight at Park West, 322 W Armitage, 7:30 p.m., $25, 18+