1991
Girlfriend
Matthew Sweet
In the fall of 1991, I saw a video on MTV that changed how I thought about music and shifted my tastes significantly toward what would become known as alternative music. No, not THAT video. I’m not talking about Nirvana and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was Matthew Sweet’s anime-infused video for the title track of his third album, Girlfriend.
I’d sometimes wake up and watch MTV in the upstairs den before going to school, and I remember it was morning, and I stood there in front of the TV transfixed throughout the entire thing. I wish I could go back in time and see it again for the first time. Or see the dumb look on my face as I heard the first strains of feedback while watching a spaceship emerge from the ocean, and then watch as a sexy, sophisticated space opera takes place over the next three minutes, interrupted only by Matthew Sweet’s disembodied head and voice.
Another version of me might have gone down the anime rabbit hole and become obsessed with manga. And I was intrigued, of course. Space Adventure Cobra: The Movie looked like the Voltron cartoons I loved as a kid, but seemed to contain nudity and adult situations. That movie looked incredible! But this was pre-internet and I had no idea where to go for softcore cartoons. Or even how to find out what movie it was. It’s been more than 30 years, and I still haven’t seen it.
Music though, was something I was learning how to investigate. And hearing Sweet’s precise stabs of dry rhythm guitar and 18 layers of harmony vocals be absolutely ripped apart by multiple unhinged guitar solos, well, that blew my mind. I had never heard anyone play guitar like that, and I wanted more of it immediately.
The “it” was Robert Quine who was, prior to this, most famous for playing with Richard Hell and the Voidoids, one of the first American punk rock bands to come out in the mid-70s. He also played with Lou Reed on his classic album, The Blue Mask. The pairing with Sweet was odd, because Sweet’s first two albums were polished, shiny pop albums that sounded like…a less exciting version of the Bangles or Cyndi Lauper. Sweet’s third album stripped away all the, uh, sweetness, but doubled down on Sweet’s layered harmony vocals while letting his guitar players go wild.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Quine and the other main guitar player on the record, Richard Lloyd from the band Television, were actual punk pioneers. Punk rockers who played early shows with the Ramones and pre-dated british bands like The Clash and Sex Pistols. They were from a generation before Nirvana and Sonic Youth, and they specialized in the kind of guitar that rock critics called “searing” and “angular”. Together, they just kicked all kinds of ass all over this record and were a key reason why Matthew Sweet’s third album isn’t just a power pop classic. It has frequent moments of ecstatic, blistering fury and jazz-like bursts of melody. And those sounds were thrilling in the context of Sweet’s sophisticated, Beatles-soaked songwriting.
The whole album really is a power-pop masterpiece. Sweet wrote it after he was divorced from his first wife. It has big divorced guy energy. Half of it is consumed with recriminations and regrets from his dissolving relationship, the other half are wistful fantasies about finding new love. The love songs included one named for Winona Rider and one called “Evangeline” about a girl who cares more about God than she does about Sweet (btw, my parents were going to name me Evangeline had I been a girl). There’s a surprising amount of theological content on the record, and Sweet has said the record captured his emergence as an atheist. It’s his lyrics about searching for a God who seems frustratingly absent that are the album’s most consistent and compelling lyrical theme.
Finally, let me add that the ballads are killer on this album. “You Don’t Love Me”, “Your Sweet Voice” and “Nothing Lasts” provide a break from the punk rock guitar heroics in favor of pedal steel guitar from one of the masters, Greg Leisz.
Two weeks ago, Matthew Sweet suffered a massive stroke while he was on tour in Europe with Hanson. He’s returned to the states and is now undergoing treatment and therapy towards what I hope is a full recovery. You can donate here:
Support Matthew Sweet’s Stroke Recovery, organized by Catherine Lyons for Matthew Sweet