Three decades after the release of Matthew Sweet’s 100% Fun (released 3/14/95), his fifth solo album not only reaffirms the man’s breakthrough of four years prior, Girlfriend, but also indicates how the Nebraska native has maintained the style template he presented on that aforementioned creative turning point.
The consistency of the entries in the Sweet discography isn’t all that surprising. He has long worked with many of the same musicians, and on this, familiar names abound: Television’s Richard Lloyd plays guitar, as does Robert Quine of Richard Hell’s Voidoids, while Greg Leisz contributes the sounds of various stringed instruments, and Ric Menck mans the drums.
Alongside these usual suspects, producer/mixer Brendan O’Brien plays guitar and keyboards (by that point, he had also worked with the Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, and Stone Temple Pilots). All those contributions are in addition to Matthew’s on various electric and acoustic guitars plus miscellaneous instruments like the theremin. And, not insignificantly, Sweet also reiterates his mastery of lead and background vocals with his exquisite singing on tracks like “Not When I Need It.”
The arrangements’ raucous density renders the recordings’ clear audio quality, as mastered by Bob Ludwig, all the more admirable. “Giving It Back,” for instance, is equal parts heavy and tuneful, the squalling guitars an element of dissonance that offsets the sweetness in Matthew’s voice. Likewise, the acoustic piano and pedal steel on “I Almost Forgot” begs why Matthew Sweet was never marketed to the modern country demographic (his association with R.E.M a deal-breaker?).
Savvy sequencing of the tracks clarifies the emotional maturity of these dozen original Sweet songs. The youthful tenor of his voice may belie his personal investment in the songs, but that virtue directly translates into Matthew’s abiding connection with his fellow musicians: notwithstanding multiple overdubbing, there’s an unmistakable camaraderie within a selection like “Lost My Mind,” to name just one.
Hardly an isolated instance within this forty-one plus minutes, it’s no more of an anomaly than its resemblance to middle-to-late period Beatles. And that reference is not based solely on the prominence of Mellotron played by O’Brien; in fact, the most famous number here, “Sick Of Myself,” may have carried a subliminal sense of lost innocence intrinsic to the vintage Lennon/McCartney tones.
The album title 100% Fun references the late Kurt Cobain’s suicide note, and the front cover of the record features a photo of a young Matthew Sweet. As such, it’s difficult to know precisely how to interpret the name of this long-player—ironically or not?— but that’s far more mystifying than how seamless the continuity of Matthew Sweet’s work over the years is.
From the extended perspective of thirty years, subsequent records such as the synth-laden Blue Sky On Mars and the Phil Spector grandiosity of In Reverse are simply a precursor to the more elemental expressions of style such as the one-two punch of 2017’s Tomorrow Forever and the next year’s sequel Tomorrow’ Daughter.
As on ’21’s Catspaw, Matthew’s predilection for the massive crunch akin to Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s hearkens to the promo-only Goodfriend released in the wake of his 1991 watershed (and included on its 2006 two-CD Legacy Edition). But then, ever since his 1986 debut, Matthew Sweet has stubbornly refused to be pigeonholed into the power pop category into which he has so often been thrust.
We can only hope the man recovers sufficiently from his October 2024 stroke to extend that string.
