Matthew Sweet has to be one of the most unassuming pop stars on the planet. Most bands will remind you before, during and after every song that there is a new album on the way. Aside from one innocuous comment, the only clue that concert patrons had was Ric Menck's bass drum head which bore the phrase "Blue Sky On Mars", and if you were more than twenty feet away you would have missed that, too. With the album a month away, this was more of a flexing of the pop muscle than a full fledged dog and pony show to move discs.
As usual, Sweet showed up with a stable of professionals. Besides stalwart Menck on drums, fellow Velvet Crush member Paul Chastain played guitar, keyboards and just about everything else he could get his hands on. Ex-Cruzados bassist Tony Marsico straddled the front line along with guitarist extraordinaire Ivan Julian, who has been a dominant creative axeman for over twenty years and still looks like a fresh face. Although they may still have been working on some arrangements for the newer songs or even the set list itself (two songs were added since the previous week), the band was certainly well-oiled and ready. As was the crowded club.
Kicking the evening off with "Dinosaur Act", the band roared through twenty songs with hardly a break for air. Sweet has a wealth of killer material to draw upon and relied on much of it to fill the show, launching only four songs from the new record. No complaints from me! When you can slap a new killer like "Over It" in between "We're The Same" and "Sick Of Myself", that's a roll few artists can match. The crowd was familiar with the songs culled from Girlfriend and Altered Beast and responded with appropriate enthusiasm, and the new songs were met with deserved appreciation as well. The songs sounded much the same as they do on record (except for some of Julian's explorations), but probably the highlight of the show was a high-octane version of "Girlfriend", his breakthrough hit, played at a much faster tempo. Although not a "greatest hits" show by any means, after hearing "Winona", "Time Capsule" and "Come To Love", even long time fans were reminded just how prolific a pop songwriter Sweet has been in this decade.
As expected, the crowd really caught fire whenever Sweet turned Julian loose for some aural pyrotechnics. Besides adding a needed edge to Sweet's pop songs (like fellow New York wizards Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd before him), Julian got a chance to stretch out and do his best Mick Ronson impression on a cover of Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", one of the encores. Also treated with reverence was the Kinks classic "Waterloo Sunset", a well-played homage to one of Sweet's heroes.
This is the third time I have seen Matthew Sweet with a band, and while each was a fulfilling experience, they have also been among the loudest shows I have ever seen. Knowing them, I can rule out the clubs and the sound engineers, so I can only surmise that the shy popster feels safer behind a wall of noise. Pity - he's a supreme talent whose songs would shine in any arrangement, and an occasional break from ear-bleed territory would be a welcome respite. Much of the texture that Paul Chastain added was lost in the mix (his keyboards were almost inaudible) and the background vocals were sometimes drowned out by the thick wave of guitar. The closest the evening came to "unplugged" was when Sweet and Ivan Julian performed "I Thought I Knew You" as a duo - on ringing electrics, of course. But volume aside, it was a remarkable evening.
Opening act Fastball was a real scene-stealer. Clearly the crowd was there to see the headliner, but they didn't care - they reared back and kicked ass for their entire set just the same. Pounding out hard crunchy pop and roll like a wittier Green Day, they fleshed out several songs from their major label debut, and even tossed in a spirited version of Tommy Tutone's classic "Jenny". Too bad there was no product of any kind in the house; they made a lot of friends that night. If and when this double bill hits your burg, better get there on time or you'll miss a real comer in Fastball.
