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October 16-22, 2008
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Hard candy
Pre-grunge indie rocker Matthew Sweet digs in deep on his new album
by Dave Kirby
Low country boil
Taj Mahal gets down and dirty at the Boulder Theater
by Christina Eisert
Hard candy
Pre-grunge indie rocker Matthew Sweet digs in deep on his new album
by Dave Kirby
Let me into the future / let me forget the past” pleads Matthew Sweet on the lead off cut to his new release, Sunshine Lies, but as the album winds out, dressed here in ragged paisley and granny-glass rock affectations, and there in bruising guitar-rock workouts, you’re left to wonder if maybe the past isn’t such a bad gig after all.
“I really like it,” concedes Sweet, one of rock music’s most genuinely guileless personalities, about the new CD. “I usually don’t go back and listen to my records after I’ve finished them, but this one just makes me feel… warm, somehow. So, I’m happy with it.”
There’s plenty to like — the Petty-ish angst rocker “Room to Rock” giving way to the slyly titled “Byrdgirl,” with Sweet mining the common border between chrome-plated neo-Rickenbacker tones and the ’80s-era Athens-scene alt rock that still informs his oeuvre, fertile territory that Sweet has prowled effectively for years and where he still finds buried treasure. The McGuinn-trib verse vocals that keep “Byrdgirl” in context re-appear in the harmonized mid-tempo “Around You Now” further down the program, and the keen efficiency and compelling melodic anchors of “Daisychain” and the album’s title cut, the latter featuring pastel background harmonies and the former a frenzied fill guitar flurry on its way out, reminds us that there’s usually a layer of abrasion and taut contentiousness submerged in Sweet’s meringue.
The album’s development book-ended a recent project that Sweet completed with former Bangle Susanna Hoffs called Under The Covers, a collection of re-imagined ’60s pop nuggets like “Different Drum” and “Monday Monday.” We asked Sweet how much of that experience influenced the shameless confectionality of Sunshine Lies.
“A lot of people have asked me that, and the answer is, honestly, not much. I had a batch of songs, mostly the ‘rocker’ ones, already done when we went in to do the covers project. We finished that up and I immediately went back to work on this.
“One thing it did do, though, was help me focus on engineering. Listening to the original versions of all these ’60s songs, I really got a strong sense of their character, the feeling that they left you with. That’s a hard thing to capture sometimes — it’s something more than just the song itself or the melody or the production. It’s sort of finding the soul of the song, and you really have get to that in the recording process.”
Home studios have had a profound and, we believe, a generally under-reported effect on the way artists approach their craft. Without an expensive studio meter running, a lot of artists can take their time building out songs, dressing them up, re-arranging… as well as, at the other extreme, cranking out dozens of unfinished pieces, some of which end up as bare-bone extras on bonus releases, or “downloads of the week,” or top-shelf release material…. or quickly forgotten detritus.
Sweet did most of this at his home studio in L.A. We asked if having all the software and instruments within pajama-stride reach tended to promote the proliferation of lots of semi-finished songs that never grow up, or an obsessively over-produced few. Or something in between.
“That’s an interesting question. I do sometimes start recording something and then lose interest and put it away before it’s done, and sometimes I’ll come back to it and I’ll think, ‘How can I improve this?’ Or not. It’s a luxury you usually don’t have working in a regular studio.
“Some songs you know you want to keep, and you just keep working on them until you get them right. Some songs… just never make it. Or they sit around for a long time. I mean, there’s no certain formula involved, but the home studio can definitely change your habits over time.”
If the album produces radio-rotation singles or not, Sweet seems comfortable where he is now. He spent some time a few years ago as one of the Thorns, recording and touring in 2003 as part of the high-art-harmony, mostly-acoustic trio that included fellow songwriters Shawn Mullins and Pete Droge, and works the odd project between his own releases. Another Hoffs project, this time aiming at ’70s singles, is on deck.
Still, the trajectory of Sweet’s career was described by the massive success he had with Girlfriend, his breakthrough album of 1991 and still one of the best moments of pre-grunge indie rock. Though the release and its influence has receded in time, Sweet says the experience was largely a good one.
“It was a little tough. I was still very young and there was just so much happening at once, it was just overwhelming. Looking back, I think I actually handled it pretty well, better than a lot of young musicians who get that level of success early in their career.
“But the thing is, after Girlfriend, no one ever said a word to me about what they wanted or expected as a follow-up. People have this idea that once you produce a successful record that you get label execs standing there in the studio, telling you what to do. Whatever pressure was there, it was all imagined on my part. You think that people want you to repeat that success, even if they’re not saying so.
“So… I just kind of rebelled and did Altered Beast, definitely one of my weirder albums. It was my way of sticking it to the man,” he laughed.
On the Bill
Matthew Sweet will perform with The Bridges at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 20, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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Low country boil
Taj Mahal gets down and dirty at the Boulder Theater
by Christina Eisert
I like my blues covered in hot sauce. I like my blues poured slow and dirty, like a martini in a dark bar just before closing time. I like my blues to ache, and I like my blues to ease my pain in that good, good way only the blues can.
But it takes a special kind of bluesman to make me sink into the blues like that; a special kind of touch that only a true Blues-Maestro knows how to lay on ya.
I get that touch when I listen to Taj Mahal. He lays it on thick, thick, thick, without getting too heavy. When I listen to Taj Mahal, I’m inspired — inspired to send the kids to my mother’s and grab my husband real tight.
In that wink-wink way, Taj Mahal knows how I feel. He tells me about a friend’s 74-year-old mother, who listened to the new album and cried out, “I feel like I should be taking my clothes off!”
“I cracked up!” Taj laughs as he tells the story, and his laugh is as grimy and dirty as his blues. I know I’ve got a real bluesman on my hands, and he’s gonna give me a run for my money.
Taj Mahal is celebrating 40 years of making the blues with the release of his new album, Maestro, a veritable communion of gifted artists gathered to sing with and pay homage to the two-time Grammy-winning blues-and-roots legend and innovator. The likes of Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Ziggy Marley and Los Lobos pay their dues on the album, and Taj Mahal gets busy laughing while he teaches them each a thing or two on songs that simmer on a low boil, with generous dashes of zydeco, reggae, South Pacific, African and world-beat spice.
It is de-licious.
Taj can’t help but agree. Maestro, he says, is for people who wanna move the furniture, roll back the rug, take their shoes off and dance all night.
For squeezin’ and kissin’. For people who want that one last slow song.
“At the end of the night, they don’t want to be going home. They want to be slow-dancing in the dancehall, holdin’ each other,” he laughs again.
“I’m just very happy. The response to my music, it’s been exciting,” he says. “All of it. It just really is an incredible process. What you’re hearing is what I was thinking in my head. I don’t have one style of blues. I like looking at the world.”
And as much as he’s been influenced by the world, the world has been influenced by him.
Taj coached a teenage Ben Harper on guitar back in the day. Harper got a chance to return the favor on the new album with “Dust Me Down,” a Hendrix-drenched Harper original that lends Taj a harder edge to explore.
Ziggy Marley chimes in as the third generation of Marleys to work with Taj (along with legend Bob Marley, Taj has also worked with Bob’s mother). Addictive reggae rhythms take over in “Black Man Brown Man,” a socially conscious tune inspiring change you can dance to.
There are sweet little surprises, like “Zanzibar,” a song he calls “one of the things that cracked me up.” Afro-European songstress Angelique Kidjo asked him to take a listen and consider it for the album.
“I was like, ‘Done deal!’ That harmony. Un-be-lievable. I’ve always had fun making the music.”
Because Taj doesn’t believe the blues are a sad thing.
“In terms of modern music, the blues have been a turning point. You can go before the blues. There’s a deep melancholy, a sadness. The blues became a whole new home for music in the world. Everything from the symphony to one man and a guitar has been affected by that style. It’s got a great constitution. Go all around the world. Everyone’s got some version. Music is an international, intercultural language.”
He speaks with a gritty twang. The scholar shines through, but so does the prankster, the soul of a man who knows how to turn his muse on.
“The music comes through me and I get out of the way and let that happen.”
He starts singing me a little Bob Marley, and it hits me, too.
“The roots of the music come from cultures that have been here a thousand years or more. Long before there was ‘world beats,’ we were playing our music. You can’t feel the world from a closed environment. You got to get out there and be a part of it. This culture has a hard time acknowledging that it learned something from someone else,” he says with a low growl. But he won’t have any fussin’.
“As far as I’m concerned, it ain’t gonna happen on my watch.”
In the Box:
Taj Mahal will perform at 8 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 19, at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St., Boulder, 303-786-7030.
Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
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