Review: Sunshine Lies but Matthew Sweet Keeps it on the Level
By Andrew Zwicker
How often have we seen great rock stars come to an untimely demise and wished we could have heard just a few more new songs from them? We’ve all discussed, blogged about, or just sat back in a natural hot spring staring into the stars, dancing to the tune of whatever Kootenay alchemic concoction was conducting your mental orchestra, and talked about the great ‘what ifs’ of rock music.
What if John and Paul had made that walk down to Saturday Night Live and launched a late-seventies Beatles comeback? What if Kurt Cobain could have straightened himself out, kicked the drugs and have become a modern day grunge Neil Young like troubadour writing classic hits into his eighties? Arguably less iconic, but equally modern day relevant, what if Brittney hadn’t been able to spread her genes into the gene pool, was still hot, and was putting out Grammy award winning hits with JT? Unless you happen to be of the likes of Tupac (who has magically released several albums and a movie posthumously) then sadly when your rock heroes are gone so is the music.
This week I stumbled across the new Matthew Sweet album Sunshine Lies as my eyes scanned the ITunes main page and saw it as a new release. Matthew Sweet is like a living version of a rock and roll what if. What if that young guitar playing singer-songwriter from the ‘it spot’ of its time, Athens Georgia, which arguably had a music scene like no other in 1983, didn’t get past the many often self induced career limiters along his musical journey? It could have been the early collaborations with future legend Michael Stipe straight out of high school as the “Community Trolls” while at the same time playing shows with Stipe’s sister as “Oh OK” and forming his own band “Buzz of Delight” that set off his musical genius. On the other hand, maybe the stress associated with playing in three bands at the same time drove him inwards. Whichever the case, twenty four years after his first infectious power pop rock album, I downloaded Sunshine Lies not knowing what to expect, having not added any Matthew Sweet to my music collection since the merging of my partner’s collection with mine three years ago. Thirty two seconds into the first track, the unmistakeable sound of a Matthew Sweet song took me back to summertime drives down the Sea to Sky highway in the early days of my girlfriend and my existence as a single unit. High hat and tambourine, windows down, smooth as silk lyrics, coast mountain air blasting through the pickup and the feeling of presence you get when in the close company of someone you truly care about immediatley flooded back as the bass line filled out the guitar driven opener appropriatley titled Time Machine.
And then there were the songs, the soundtrack to the memories. Sweet’s 1991 album, Girlfriend, the one that ironically went on to be a top ten hit and the biggest commercial success of his career just after the record label dropped him prior to its release is a good benchmark for what to expect on the latest offering. Sunshine Lies, though released 18 years after Girlfriend, could very easily be considered a sequel album as the songs feel like a natural evolution of the ‘91 disc. The songs, while using much of the same instrumentation and sounds, are similar enough to immediately be recognized as classic Sweet, tweaked in a way that could only happen after 24 years of playing essentially the same sound.
As far from a sell out as may be possible for a commercially successful musician, Sweet is the anti Madonna. He’s the guy that found a sound that worked and that was him to a T. No re-inventions in his books. A slight mad-scientist-musician-perfectionist complex perhaps? That could explain the natural and organic feeling of the 19 song Sunshine Lies recorded as the majority of his albums have been in his homestudio as Sweet plays, records and produces the majority of the instruments himself.
“Byrdgirl” sounds like part two of “I’ve Been Waiting” from Girlfriend and is the most iconic Sweet-sounding song on the album. The clear stand out, “Feel Fear” is something slightly more unexpected. The perfection complex and a quarter century working on how to churn out the perfect emotionally filled, dark song that feels as if it was written about a very specific incident in his life come alive on “Feel Fear”. That kind of charged back story in a geniously simple song overlaid with Sweet’s hauntingly and literally sweet voice backed up by a choir of himself harmonizing the “Feeeeel Fear Feeeeel Fear” background doesn’t sound like a pop hit in that description. Run it all through the Sweet power pop factory and you’ve got an instant classic.
Over the years the “Yeah Yeah” bands have come in and out of style. My personal favourite yeah yeah era of the 91-94 Bi-Coastal Seattle / Halifax indie scenes neatly coincided with the ’91 Girlfriend which is paid homage to on the tenth track, “Sunrise Eyes”, gloriously. Think a Chris Murphy song from Smeared with a touch of clean 60s Beatle pop, mix in the voice of Roy Orbison with a slight cold and maybe just a bit of the right angled bass lines of 80s REM and you’re pretty close to finding that magic blend noticeable in some fashion or another on every song.
The other stand out on the album is Sweet’s take on a warring world /terrorism inspired political track. In the mold of “All You Need is Love”, Sweet spreads the message that we’ve all got our issues, good and bad, there’s not much we can do about it all so let’s just love each other and get on with it. Simplifying the crux of the world’s religions down to the ultimate simple solution to all of the world’s problems, if we could all just love our neighbours the world would be a better place. Lay that message across four barre chords and you’ve got a gem of a song, equal parts political and power folk rock.
What if a rock star could overcome difficulties throughout their career, work on their music when times get tough and not worry about mainstream success but rather perfecting their sound? What if a rock star could avoid drugging themselves to death and live out a healthy life continuing to tinker and perfect a sound that is unmistakably their own? Well what you’d have is a 19 song album of new yet unmistakably familiar Matthew Sweet songs that will stick in your head and evoke memories of the kind only a well crafted singer, songwriter, and producer with an intuitive sense for crafting intensely simple lyrics over the sweetest of rock melodies. What if one of your favourite singers from several decades ago was still alive and still cranking out new music? Welcome to Sunshine Lies.
Attached Video: See Sweet strip down Let’s Love to its acoustic roots. His appearance has arguably declined since I last saw him, and maybe just maybe years of sitting in a studio perfecting every sound while playing nearly every instrument on nearly every album has put a few pounds on his frame but that sweet voice and perfectly simple song writing has remained.
