Sweet's music has absorbed the sunshine

By SEAN MOELLER - For the North County Times | Wednesday, August 20, 2008 10:46 AM PDT ∞

Matthew Sweet has lived in California for the past 15 years and you think about the number and ask, "That's it?" ---- for this is a guy who has a good grip on the perpetually fine weather and easy-going nature of the sights.

He's a musician who has perfected the power-pop hook ---- which would almost seem to be the state anthem ---- despite growing up a Midwesterner, in one of the most painful states to cross in this great land, a place that eats up football as if it were an entree and endures a bitter, lonely winter season every year.

Sweet lives in Los Angeles but grew up in Lincoln, Neb., where he first saw R.E.M. play a gig for a small handful of people when Michael Stipe and Co. were first cutting their teeth.

"They were really different from everyone else. I had one of their 45s that I'd ordered out of New York Rocker, which was a pretty cool magazine back then," Sweet said last week from his home. "It's hard for people to remember that then there was no Internet. I think maybe 80 people went to see them that night."

After his high school graduation, Sweet moved to Athens, Ga. ---- home of R.E.M. ---- at the suggestion of Mitch Easter, whom he met at that show and with whom he struck up a pen-pal friendship. Easter has made a name for himself foremost as a producer of a number of R.E.M. albums.

When Sweet got to Athens, the future home of the psychedelic pop crew called the Elephant Six Collective, he played in a band with R.E.M. lead singer Stipe's sister, Linda.

"I had a good time in Lincoln. I just wanted to go somewhere really different," he said. "I was around Michael a lot early on. Those guys were always really supportive of my music. I haven't seen Michael in a long time now, but I see Peter Buck and Mike Mills a lot more often. They made a real big impression on me as a teenage fan. You could get really enveloped with a record back then. That was your alone time. I can't really imagine that there aren't people that are still able to do that. There are alienated people everywhere. People don't hear about the album as much anymore."

Sweet is an album guy in a world where many have been crying that the form ---- with its careful track sequencing, and the idea of listening to a recorded work from start to finish ---- is antiquated, but in recent months the sale of turntables and vinyl albums has seen an unthinkable resurgence. His latest album, "Sunshine Lies" (out Tuesday on CD and vinyl), is another batch of songs that emphasizes the grand escape that rock 'n' roll and a proud chorus are to him.

He clearly hasn't outgrown the need to construct songs that will be fun to play live ---- allowing him the ability to flail around, sweat a lot and glorify all that a melody can bring to the party ---- and that will burn in your ears for lengths of time.

"When I first started out, Mariah Carey was pop music," Sweet said. "I've always really liked stuff that was very melodic. I've never felt any restrictions that I had to be a certain guy. People ask me, 'Are you worried 'cause you're power pop?' It is just rock music, really."

He has never been into much of the stuff that his peers have done, instead looking mostly at older records for what they could teach him about songwriting and melody. He looked to the albums of Elvis Costello and XTC to teach him things, and the lessons were well learned, as Sweet knows his way around a pop song.

"I wasn't really a music fan of people my own age," he said. "I was mostly into older records."

Now, after nearly two decades of putting out well-received albums that still maintain a distinct pop-cult following, he's attracting young fans in an interesting way ---- a way that he didn't expect or approve.

"It's a weird time," Sweet said about the musical atmosphere and his audiences at the same time. "It's kind of a good mixture. There are preteens at the shows and there are people seven, eight years older than me. I did more drunken college shows back then, but it hasn't changed that much. The radio isn't the same and even if you get a song on the radio, it doesn't necessarily sell records like it used to.

"A lot of kids have gotten into me because my song 'Girlfriend' (from his celebrated 1991 record of the same name) is on 'Guitar Hero II.' I've been trying to see if I can get a lawsuit against them 'cause they never asked to use the song. I was over at a friend's house and I saw a kid playing the game and I heard my song. I watched him play that game to my song. People were telling me that it didn't sound like me on that game. I said, 'Wait, that's me,' and they said, 'No, it's not,' and I was like, 'Yes! It is.'

"I found out that the Romantics have a lawsuit going against the makers of that game. Apparently the makers ... said that it's not really the Romantics, but you can't tell it's not them. I don't know if the Romantics are going to win their suit, but it's really weird. I've never sued anyone in my life, but I don't really think it would amount to much anyway."

Matthew Sweet, with the Northstar Session

When: 8 p.m. Aug. 25

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $20-$22

Info: (858) 481-8140 or bellyup.com

Web: matthewsweet.com

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