Matthew Sweet: In Reverse : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Matthew Sweet's influences used to be a lovely lamé noose he hanged himself with. The Tuesday Weld shot on the cover of his album Girlfriend, the presence of heavy-hitter guitarists like Richard Lloyd (Television) and Robert Quine (Voidoids), even his Seventies glam-band last name - it was all quite stylish but at times chokingly trite, as if Sweet were trying too hard and losing himself in the process. On In Reverse, his seventh album, he finally masters his own love of retro gimmickry. Production tricks still abound: Four songs are recorded using an update of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound technique, with pianos, basses, backward guitars, theremin, harpsichord and sleigh bells piled on for texture while about eighty Matthew Sweets angelically harmonize. But like the classics "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' " or "Be My Baby," these songs are such perfect little valentines that the production just brings them to larger life. "If Time Permits" is an appeal to right old wrongs; "Untitled" is about the ache of unfulfillment. Sweet isn't just making tidy date music here - he has something real to say about the passage of time and the wisdom that comes after youth. He's figured out what influences are for: not just to show how cool you are, but to help you make sense of the world, and yourself in it. (RS 826)

KAREN SCHOEMER