The Freewheeling Matthew Sweet

 By Henry Lipput

Matthew Sweet’s splendid new album Catspaw (Omnivore Recordings) is his first since 2018’s Tomorrow’s Daughter and also his first entirely solo release (except for drums which are played by his longtime collaborator Ric Menck). On his previous albums Sweet has played rhythm guitar, bass, and keyboards and well as supplying both lead and backing vocals. On Catspaw, for the first time he also plays all of the lead electric guitar parts (he‘s no slouch on acoustic leads either as he proved on “I Thought I Knew You“ with Lloyd Cole on rhythm acoustic from his 1991 breakthrough album Girlfriend).

Since Girlfriend Sweet has had NYC post-punk guitar icons like Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd, and Ivan Julian provide the lead electric guitar parts and he obviously has learned from these masters. He has said his playing on Catspaw was “free form” and “spontaneous” (I would add “freewheeling” to this list to describe his loose and melodic playing). There’s also a stomp and crunch to his guitar work on the new album that recalls Neil Young in his Crazy Horse mode. The opening track “Blown Away“ is a prime example; “Drifting,” on the other hand, has a fine clean line (and there‘s also a lovely bit of counter-melody in the mix that recalls The Youngblood’s “Get Together.”)

Although there are some dark moments on Catspaw, for every song like “Best Of Me” in which Sweet questions whether there’s any point in his being alive (“What if the best of me isn’t good enough/And any world that doesn’t have me is better off without”) there are songs like “Give A Little” (“Give a little bit of love/And I’ll give a little bit of love back to you/Give a little bit of hope/And I’ll give a little bit of hope back to you”) and the seize-the-day message of “Challenge The Gods” (“Just do what you want to do/Go where you want to go/Challenge the gods to act”). 

And for every breakup song like “Come Home” (“But I won’t forget again/That my heart’s already torn/I remember how it feels/To be lost without you”) there are songs like “Coming Soon” that tell of hoped-for new loves: “You’ve arrived to bring about the end of the world/I’m about to make you mine/You’re about to see me as I want to be seen/So I’m already feeling high.”

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