INTERVIEW: Matthew Sweet, 100% Pop

- Joe Silva

Lately, when you're more prone to landing the cover of Rolling Stone by reinflating a legend and dusting it off for a nationwide tour, or by being the dysfunctional wife of one (you fill in the blanks...), Matthew Sweet figures in as something of a rare bird. The point was better illustrated at a recent Chinese New Year throwdown given by Atlanta's "modern" rock station. Matthew had been square pegged in third on a four act bill that also included one requisite alterna-pop metal band, some post-Tull blues/folk thing, and a top five adult contemporary (shudder shudder...) group who recently rang in the western calendar New Year with Dick Clark. But no matter how many dozens of spins Matthew's epic pop LP Girlfriend have gotten at mainstream frat parties since it's release a few years ago, your garden variety radio listeners were still largely just filing into their seats when Matthew walked out under the indigo veil of the house lights.

But then again, it's still a fairly dicey business these days trying to fashion a career by trafficking in pop songs, whether they're as pretty flawless as Matthew's are or not. You have to work harder than the CandleJamPilotGarden's of the world and there are long distances between pre-album release outings like this one and the MTV Buzz Bin. The last time Matthew was circumnavigating the halls and bars of the collegiate circuit, I accidently taped part of a conversation with him trying to persuade his record company people to let him have a break from the string of interviews he was doing on the road. Still caught in the popularity wake of Girlfriend, his publicity folk were having him do cellular press conferences from his tour bus with seven journalists at a time. Even though the somewhat moodier follow-up record (Altered Beast) wasn't quite doing the in-store business of its predecessor, Matthew was still hot, and everybody wanted to ask him why he wasn't he wasn't happy anymore. The joke became that the next record was going to be called something like 100% Fun, and as it turned out he wasn't kidding.

"You know, I would never bend my music because of pressure like that, although I will admit that I did have a sort of feeling like '...I'm gonna make a record and you will not be able to say it doesn't sound good...' so I'd be sure I'd never have to hear that again." Matthew says from his manager's office before the evening's show. He's more or less just walked in, still a little hoarse from the warm-up date the night before in a smaller Atlanta club. "People have come around a lot to it (Altered Beast) but it's still like this difficult record that's weird and sprawling."

But Matthew would agree that beneath the surface plastic of 100% Fun (Zoo), there are probably just as many minor chord sentiments etched onto the new album as the last.

"Yeah, now it's just that everyone will be fooled because of that title. It's got this photo on the cover from like 1974 of me with big headphones on blissfully listening to my King Kong soundtrack album wearing a smile you'd never get out of me these days"

Discounting the smirk factor, 100% Fun, plays like a well negotiated merger between the two works that pre-date it. It still has manages the semi-manicured, unbridled guitar rock moments of one with the high sheen tunefulness of the other. And with noted Black Crowes/Pearl Jam producer Brendan O'Brien enlisted to help the shape the project, the equation balances nicely. Onstage there's no clunky overlap between songs new and old. Having just motored in from LA (long-standing guitar contributor Richard Lloyd not being able to fly due to an recent auto accident) and only a few crashes rehearsals later, new material like "Super Baby" is seamlessly pulled off alongside the numbers they've played over and over. Freshly plucked from the Love Jones combo, drummer Stuart Johnson rattles away like a smiling, twenty-something version of Costello stickman Pete Thomas. During the more heated moments of their set, where Lloyd looks like someone more apt to fiercely snap the neck of his guitar during a wrenching solo than someone who just spent a week recovering in a hospital from a car wreck, Matthew and company have just as much bare naked aggression as the hair band that came on before them.

What's bundled in with the Beach Boy vocal windup of "Not When I Need It," the blissfully swirling sonic muddle of "Lost My Mind," and the straightforward Peter Buck/Byrdsian hook of "Walk Out" is a more lyrically disassembled version of Sweet than we saw last time round. There's a tone of resolution to moments like "...everything changes/it's hard not to tell/like a bird you'd sooner fly away." or "...the reflection that you see/is a shell of what you were/it's not who you want to be." There are similar points like this littered throughout the record, where you seem to be getting clued into someone's concern for the passing of time. Although he won't let necessarily commit to it outright, you get the notion that you're privy to Sweet trying to verbally reconcile an inevitable shift in his nature.

"I think for most people they don't really deal with that issue, thinking about whether they're going to die and what it all means. They're trying to forget. And for me, I couldn't stand it. I had to dig into and examine my entire youth." he says tossing in a few non-binding laughs. "I guess when I got into my young adulthood, I started thinking 'Do I really believe in God?' and that made me start thinking more about the reality of things. "Get Older" is kind of like the song I wrote to make myself feel better about it."

Which leaves you to wonder that after two outright guitar ridden discs where he might be developing the scope of his verse, will he step away from the rock combo ethic that he initially shunned on his earlier records (Earth, Inside). Having a musical coming of age that was obliquely associated with (but not actually a part of) the Athens, Georgia scene of the early eighties, Matthew didn't appear primarily interested in miming the guitar, bass and drum success of his neighbors. There were keyboards and electronic percussion incorporated, but very little of that is mustered into his current makeup.

"There's was a little monophonic synth sitting around at Brendan's when I was doing the vocals to "Super Baby" that I play in one section and people are horrified by it. They say it sounds like The Cars! Although the first Cars album is sounding pretty good these days. As it goes for programmed music now, I recently got a Kraftwerk record again so I'm into that electronic aesthetic, but as to how that would apply in my own music, I wouldn't expect me to make an electronic record. And as more and more bands come around to doing things with like string sections and stuff, although I really like The Left Bank and certain things with strings on them, it's kind of made me feel more against doing it."

So while we apparently shouldn't look to Sweet hiring on a slew of semi-exotic Eygptian flute players for "his" next project, you're left to wonder what someone so firmly esconsced in the dwindling power pop bortherhood will do in the future. After applying a fresh face to any genre, the artist usually seeks to warp the parameters if not for the sake of the art at hand, then for sheer amusement. On occasion it's worked for Neil Young, but considering his recent return to Crazy Horse form, perhaps they were uneccessary forays for the listeners who bothered to follow along.

"You know back at the time (of Inside), I wanted to be someone of my own time, doing things with keyboards and stuff. Then I heard Pet Sounds and I got so depressed because it had been done so perfectly already."

Point well taken.

Matthew's new release, 100% Fun, will be issued on vinyl by Zoo on February 28. The cassette and compact disc format will be serviced on March 14.