Matthew Sweet
100% Fun (Zoo)
by Marc Hirsh
Matthew Sweet
100% Fun (Zoo)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in the Rice Thresher, March 17, 1995
Nobody who forms half of his own backing band should sound as spontaneous and live as Matthew Sweet. Even overdubbing bass and layers of vocals and guitars by himself, he sounds more energetic on 100% Fun than most bands can manage.
Which comes as no surprise for those who have succumbed to this neopopster's charms on previous albums such as Girlfriend and Altered Beast. Though Fun seems to be a bit more baroque than the others, it still shows Sweet as a singular singer and songwriter.
Sweet's voice seems to be the key ingredient to the new album's success. It's always given Sweet a distinctive sound, but it's beginning to take on a strength that wasn't obvious in the past. All over the album, the music swells and Sweet's voice just rides out the maelstrom so smoothly and perfectly that Sweet doesn't need to wail to make his point.
Many of the songs on Fun use instruments that are new to Sweet's arsenal. The electric harpsichord on "Walk Out" makes the song seem like a classic ripped out of 1965, and mellotron and theremin get dusted off for "Lost My Mind," a slab of psychedelia that is easily the heaviest thing Sweet has ever done.
Not that Sweet has abandoned his basic sound. Most of the songs are jammed tight with guitar, and veteran punk guitarists Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd help out again to see to it that things don't get too polished. This time out, though, their performances seem oddly restrained, as if they were afraid to play with the same abandon as on previous Sweet songs such as "Ugly Truth Rock," "Divine Intervention" and "Girlfriend."
If the guitar solos aren't as memorable as they used to be, maybe that's because Lloyd and Quine are afraid of detracting attention from the songs, some of which are the best Sweet has ever written. His twin obsessions of Neil Young and the Beatles are still present, although Sweet seems to be leaning more heavily toward the latter.
Content to relive the louder parts of Revolver, Sweet has all but abandoned the acoustic numbers that tempered his previous albums. With the exception of the slow "I Almost Forgot" and ornate "Walk Out," Sweet doesn't even touch an acoustic guitar. Even the slow numbers like the electric piano-driven "Everything Changes" feature stacks of electric guitars.
The reliance on distortion is to the detriment of the album as a whole, but not much. The songs are too good for that. The massive opener, "Sick Of Myself," starts things off strongly, laying insecurity and the love of hopeless causes out on the line over a tremendous wave of sound. The album ends with "Smog Moon," one of Sweet's best songs and what should be a textbook exercise in tension and release in Pop music.
The rest of the ride isn't too shabby either. "Not When I Need It" puts lyrics about being in the right place at the wrong time against a psychedelic backdrop, while the extremely Beatlesque "Giving It Back" drowns its listeners in harmony vocals. Most of the songs fall into the category of "love songs," Sweet having confined his Wise Man Who Knows Better Than You stance to "Get Older," which might be either a call to maturity, a confidence booster for misfits or his "fuck you" to Generation X.
Although it ignores some of Sweet's strengths (he can be an absolutely heartcrushing balladeer, and I point to Girlfriend's "You Don't Love Me" for proof), 100% Fun neatly skips over his weak spots, clocking in at a concise 41 minutes compared to the relatively epic sweep of his last few albums. It's not a very representative showcase of what Sweet's capable of doing, but it accomplishes what it sets out to do extremely well. It might not be particularly happy, but 100% Fun manages to deliver a damn good time.