The Album Review Club - Week #147 - (page 1942) - Blonde On Blonde - Bob Dylan

RobMCFC said:
The Album Review Club

Girlfriend – Matthew Sweet (1991)

Selected by RobMCFC

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The Great Musical Time Machine

The date on the back of the album says 1991, but with the flux capacitor primed, the display in the nostalgia-fuelled, magical, musical time machine says it's December 1992.

For my second consecutive nomination, I'm picking an album that was recorded in 1990, released in 1991 and I finally bought in 1992.

December 1992 was my last Christmas living at home before our wedding the following year. As had become tradition, I treated myself to three or four CDs at Christmas:

For the record, that year's selection was:-

  • The Ultimate Experience - a Jimi Hendrix compilation
  • Harvest Moon - Neil Young
  • Use Your Illusion II - Guns 'N' Roses
  • Girlfriend - Matthew Sweet
That last purchase was prompted by 1) the fact that it appeared in Q magazine's Top 50 albums of 1992, and 2) Matthew Sweet supported Del Amitri for their show that I saw at the Manchester Apollo in December that year.

You can probably guess which of the four I've played way more than the others over the last 30 years.



The Album

In the late 80s, Matthew Sweet was drinking in the last chance saloon. His first two albums didn't fare all that well commercially, and reviews talk of his songs being hidden beneath layers of "overly glossy production". After playing in the Athens music scene for a few years, where he became friends with local heroes R.E.M., Sweet moved to New York, but soon his marriage was falling apart. All of the above were key to the lyrics and the sound of the music that were to feature on his spectacular career-defining third album, Girlfriend.

After hearing the demos that Sweet had recorded in his house, his manager commented that they reminded him of Crazy Horse and Neil Young. Sweet listened to some Crazy Horse material and agreed. This probably affected how the sound of the record was shaped going forward.

At the time, he was friends with Lloyd Cole, who plays on some of the tracks. Cole suggested that he change the name of the original title track from "Good Friend" to "Girlfriend", and even suggested naming the song "Winona" after Winona Ryder (even though the song isn't really about her). Two other key contributors to the sound of the album were Television's Richard Lloyd and guitarist Robert Quine, who had played with Lou Reed amongst others. Quine was such an unpredictable soloist he never played the same thing twice, so his explosive contributions were compilations from his four or five takes.

It's worth noting that there are no keyboards on this album, no digital effects or processing, and no effects pedals were used for the guitars, although I heard an interview where Sweet said that they did use an early version of ProTools to edit a few small pieces. Matthew Sweet wrote all the songs, played all the bass and provided all of the vocals, which means that there must be some great studio editing to produce the harmony vocals that elevate some of the tracks.

When the album was finished, it sat on the shelf whilst Sweet and his team tried to find a label that would release it. He'd been dropped from his previous label after the second album, and it wasn't until a new label, Zoo Entertainment, took a chance that it finally saw the light of day.

Although it wasn't a huge hit, the delayed release probably helped Girlfriend achieve the cult status it did: it was released a few weeks after Nirvana's Nevermind, and as engineer Jim Rondinelli noted, "people were scrambling to find music that was guitar-driven, loud and edgy".

After Girlfriend, Sweet went on to have a steady, if unspectacular career, with some particularly good albums in the 1990s. He also had a hand in the Austin Powers story, as he was a member of Ming Tea, playing bassist Sid Belvedere alongside Mike Myers' Austin Powers and Susanna Hoffs as Jillian Shagwell.

Despite my general lack of love for cover versions, he also did a series of enjoyable cover albums with Susanna Hoffs that includes a great version of forum favourite, "Alone Again Or".



My Thoughts

Girlfriend is often referred to as Matthew Sweet’s divorce album, but the truth is that the various songs find him at that stage between relationships: looking back on the breakup whilst finding happiness with a new partner. Whilst a broken relationship is obvious in some of the lyrics, many of the songs are upbeat and dazzle with their guitar pyrotechnics.

My favourite song here is the exceptional title track: a blistering guitar-driven rocker that moves fast, yet somehow manages to go up a gear later in the song!

Other favourites include the Byrdsy jangle of "I've Been Waiting", the guitar heaven of "Evangeline" (which is based on a Japanese comic book heroine), the flamenco-esque "Though I Knew You" (which is just Sweet and Lloyd Cole on the guitars), the power pop of "I Wanted to Tell You" and the driving rocker “Holy War”.

But there is a good deal of variety from track-to-track: check out the mid-tempo shuffle of “Looking at the Sun”, the slow, bluesy “Day for Night” or the quiet “Your Sweet Voice”.

Clocking in at just over the hour mark, the album isn't perfect - it's probably two or three songs too long, although picking which tracks to leave out is a difficult task. "Winona", "You Don't Love Me" and "Nothing Lasts" are the tracks I like least, and without these, I think it would be 46 minutes of perfection, but this is just a minor quibble.

Incidentally, the album was originally titled "Nothing Lasts", but with actress Tuesday Weld having agreed to have her 1950s photograph on the cover, she understandably baulked at the idea of pairing this image with the words "Nothing Lasts"!

I don't know how many of you have heard this album: Matthew Sweet is not a household name, but the reviews for Girlfriend were pretty spectacular, so it's possible that some may have picked this one up or at least have heard it at the time. It's a bit different from most of the music in my collection in that it isn't folk or country or blues or straight-ahead rock. It's that oft-derided genre called power pop, but this album is guitar heaven - a thrilling mix of guitar sound left, right and centre, and when listening through headphones it's a real treat. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have done over the years, and I look forward to hearing what you all think.
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That’s a great review mate.
 
FogBlueInSanFran said:
No not the artist but my record covers many of the same themes!
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I consider myself a very honest and open person, so would you be more annoyed if I admitted the following ....

When we started this thread, like everybody I was looking at my top 10 / top 20 albums and wondering which to pick.
Then as the thread evolved and the choices started getting interesting, I began to think that picking Americana / country / hard rock every pick wouldn't go down well with everybody, and I started to think about those slightly alternative picks that might be interesting.

So, when you picked Fountains of Wayne way back in January last year, it occurred to me that I had an album that musically, trod very similar ground. Naturally, I wanted to give it a year or so before making the pick, but you are indirectly responsible for nudging my thinking in this direction, so thank you!

Girlfriend is an album that probably hovers somewhere in the top 30/40 of my collection, but it isn't an album that I'd thought of nominating at the start of this thread.
 
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