After spending the '80s as an unappreciated
jangle pop guitarist with Oh-OK and
Lloyd Cole, as well as a solo artist,
Matthew Sweet emerged in 1991 as the leading figure of the American
power pop revival. Like his British counterparts
Teenage Fanclub,
Sweet adhered to traditional songcraft, yet subverted the form by adding noisy
post-punk guitar and flourishes of
country-rock, resulting in an amalgam of
the Beatles,
Big Star,
R.E.M., and
Neil Young. Recorded with guitarists
Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine,
Sweet's third album,
Girlfriend (1991), became a word-of-mouth critical and commercial hit over the course of 1992, with its title track reaching the Top Five on the Modern Rock charts.
For the next five years, as alternative rock was the dominant commercial force in
rock & roll,
Sweet was a popular concert attraction, and his reputation as an alternative pop singer/songwriter was at its peak -- his next two records,
Altered Beast (1993) and
100% Fun (1995), were both critically acclaimed and relatively successful albums, with the latter reaching gold status and making many year-end best-of lists. Beginning with 1997's
Blue Sky on Mars,
Sweet settled into cult status, and while he wasn't enjoying the success of his previous records, most
power pop records of the latter half of the '90s were indebted to
Girlfriend.
Matthew Sweet began playing music while he was a high-school student in his native Lincoln, NE. Upon his graduation in 1983, he decided to attend the University of Georgia in Athens because of its burgeoning underground music scene. Once he arrived at college, he met Lynda Stipe and joined her band, Oh-OK, in time to play on their second EP, the Mitch Easter-produced Furthermore What, which was released late in 1983. The following year, he and Oh-OK drummer David Pierce formed
Buzz of Delight, releasing Sound Castles later that year. Over the course of 1984 and 1985,
Sweet cut a demo tape with producer
Don Dixon. Columbia Records heard the
Buzz of Delight record and the demo and offered him a contract in 1985. Upon signing with Columbia, he relocated to New York and recorded his debut, Inside. Released in 1986, Inside featured
Sweet playing nearly all of the instruments on the record, supported by a drum machine; the album also featured several cameos, including Chris Stamey, Fred Maher, Anton Fier, and
Aimee Mann. That same year,
Sweet guested on Blast of Silence, an album by Fier's band,
the Golden Palominos.
Despite positive reviews, Inside was ignored upon its release and Columbia dropped
Sweet. During 1988, he signed with A&M Records and recorded his second album,
Earth. Produced by Fred Maher and released in 1989,
Earth again featured
Sweet as a one-man band, augmented by guitarists Robert Quine (
Lou Reed,
Richard Hell) and
Richard Lloyd (
Television). The album failed to make any impact, and A&M dropped
Sweet as he was working on his third album in 1990. Over the next year, he earned money by touring as
Lloyd Cole's guitarist while shopping a demo of his album to various labels, with little success. Eventually, the president of Zoo signed him upon overhearing the demo in an office.
Girlfriend, an album largely inspired by the dissolution of his marriage, was the first album
Sweet recorded with a live band, and its sound -- which was powered by
Lloyd and Quine -- was considerably more immediate and raw than its predecessors. Upon its late 1991 release,
Girlfriend earned strong reviews and "Divine Intervention" became a moderate hit, but it wasn't until the spring of 1992, when the title track took off, that the album became a genuine hit. By the end of the year,
Girlfriend had gone gold and
Sweet had moved to Los Angeles.
Sweet recorded the follow-up to
Girlfriend with producer Richard Dashut, who had previously been best known for his work with
Fleetwood Mac and
Lindsey Buckingham. Again featuring Quine and
Lloyd, the resulting
Altered Beast was messier than
Girlfriend and consequently received mixed reviews upon release in early 1993, yet it became a sizable college radio hit on the strength of the modern
rock and MTV hits "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule." After releasing the stopgap EP Son of Altered Beast in the spring of 1994,
Sweet recorded his fifth album, this time with a more commercial producer -- Brendan O'Brien, who had previously worked with
Pearl Jam and
Stone Temple Pilots. Released in the spring of 1995,
100% Fun received
Sweet's strongest reviews to date and went gold on the strength of "Sick of Myself," his first single to scrape the bottom reaches of the pop charts.
Following
100% Fun,
Sweet parted ways with
Lloyd and Quine, but retained O'Brien for 1997's
Blue Sky on Mars. Despite the strong initial placing for its lead single "Where You Get Love,"
Blue Sky on Mars received mixed reviews upon its spring release, and it failed to match the success of its immediate predecessor.
In Reverse followed in 1999, and the best-of collection Time Capsule arrived a year later. Hip-O released To Understand: The Early Recordings of Matthew Sweet in 2002, a collection that
Sweet followed up with the Japanese-only release Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu. He returned to the domestic studio in 2004 for Living Things, followed by a collection of choice covers with ex-
Bangle Susanna Hoffs called
Under the Covers, Vol. 1 in 2006. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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