The old Matthew Sweet was a man on a noble mission: to liberate guitar pop from all constraints of time and context. Sweet's 1991 breakout album, Girlfriend, was a revelation – crisp, crunchy song nuggets fortified with melodies that seemed so essential, they rocked your genetic matter.

Blue Sky on Mars is about smaller pleasures. For one, Sweet has abandoned Richard Lloyd (ex-Television) and Robert Quine (the Voidoids, Lou Reed), the visionary guitar craftsmen who energized his previous three discs. On Blue Sky, Sweet plays almost every instrument himself. As a result, the album has a canned feel. Sometimes this is a plus: The gooey "Where You Get Love" oozes with enough ersatz smarm to fondly recall Electric Light Orchestra. But on "Until You Break," the spare drum machine and acoustic-guitar arrangement reveal the song's basic slightness.

Sweet's main trouble is that he's too facile with pop's stylistic clichés. On "Make Believe," he's doing "California Girls"-era Brian Wilson; on "All Over My Head," it's T. Rex. "Back to You"? The Byrds. And on "Missing Time," Blue Sky's elegiac final track, Sweet doesn't waste a minute in mimicking present-day R.E.M., complete with the same kind of clean, upper-register vocal that Michael Stipe has grown into in recent years.

Will the real Matthew Sweet please stand up? Is he smug, romantic, alienated or all of the above? Sky's insipid lyrics don't offer much of a clue. Sweet is an undeniably seasoned songsmith, but here he comes off as an overzealous child prodigy. Co-producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam) hasn't helped matters any by layering on the cheese with a phalanx of classic synthesizers.

There is room in this world for rollicking, imitative pop music with a snappy beat: In the '70s, it was made by the Bay City Rollers. On Blue Sky, Sweet teeters on the razor-thin line between timeless and trivial. (RS 757)

ALEC FOEGE