Sweet

Reading the somewhat positive reviews of Matthew Sweet's new album generated a fit of early-90s nostalgia over the weekend, so I threw the trio of albums he recorded with Robert Prine, Richard Lloyd et al into the car and gave them a re-listen while driving around town doing errands and such. Conclusion: still really good! But while Altered Beast and 100% Fun are certainly minor classics, 1991's Girlfriend remains a certified desert island-quality pop-rock masterpiece. On one level it's just another piece of evidence supporting the first principle of musical greatness, namely that while talent, hard work, and inspiration can take you far, the path to true immortality necessarily involves falling deeply in love only to have your heart ripped from your chest, thrown to the ground, and stomped so badly that you have no choice but to write songs about it because nothing else can ease the pain. Yet Girlfriend is also noteworthy for being a particularly comprehensive example of the genre, narratively speaking. Blood on the Tracks is mostly aftermath, a pure howl of rage. Rumours demonstrated the commercial potential of keeping the band together after everyone cheated on and betrayed everyone else--no easy trick. (Sleater-Kinney managed this for one song but I suspect the wounds in that case didn't go so deep.) In Girlfriend, Sweet takes nearly half the album explaining the precursors of his failed marriage, laying out with brutal honesty how his own obsessive neediness and impossible expectations sowed the seeds of the inevitable breakup. Then, the gut-punched anger of "Thought I Knew You" on track 8 is followed by sadness ("You Don't Love Me"), defiance ("I Wanted to Tell  You"), and so and so forth all the way to the philosophic resignation of "Nothing Lasts," the original title of the album. Of course, the perspectives of heartache have their limitations--some things last. Girlfriend, for one.