Sunshine Lies
Matthew Sweet has made a career out of finding new ways to cruise old, familiar terrain. His interest in 1960s styled pop is reflected by his emphasis on tight harmonies, chiming guitar lines, swooning choruses, and strong, stereo-separated recordings where headphones attack the brain’s separate hemispheres with a true sense of mission. 2008’s *Sunshine Lies* features Sweet’s established team — guitarists Richard Lloyd and Ivan Julian, drummer Ric Menck and multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz — to supplement Sweet’s walls of harmonies, and their presence adds a necessary toughness. “Julian burns through “Room to Rock,” while Lloyd and Julian team up for the riff-dependent “Flying” with extra layers of feedback, unleashing this sentimental troubadour’s dark side. Sweet mellows for the nostalgic pining of the piano-based “Byrdgirl” and the affecting “Feel Fear” where his voice is wrapped in reverb sweeps through a psychedelic terrain with a ‘70s AM radio lightness of being. Sweet yearns for better days as the surging desperation of “Let’s Love” and “Burn Through Love” expose a man who’s growing older with his youth haunting his memory.
More of the same from Matthew Sweet, only minus the fireworks of his best work.
Sometimes it's about trying something new, and sometimes it's about finding an old groove. When Matthew Sweet cut the 1991 album Girlfriend, he bundled his obsessions into tight, starry-eyed, dark-hearted songs that sounded forward-looking in spite of their debt to '60s pop. Much of the album's distinctive sound came…
Sweet’s production foregrounds the massive guitar hooks, giving the album a punch that carries some heavy follow-through.