MATTHEW SWEET AND SUSANNA HOFFS
''UNDER THE COVERS, VOL. 2''
JULY 21 2009
77:42
1/Sugar Magnolia
Robert Hunter / Bob Weir/3:32
2/Go All the Way
Wally Bryson / Eric Carmen/3:33
3/Second Hand News/Feat. Lindsay Buckingham
Lindsey Buckingham/3:13
4/Bell Bottom Blues
Eric Clapton/5:02
5/All the Young Dudes
David Bowie/3:52
6/You're So Vain
Carly Simon/4:22
7/Here Comes My Girl
Mike Campbell / Tom Petty/4:22
8/I've Seen All Good People: Your Move/All Good People/Feat. Steve Howe
Jon Anderson / Chris Squire/7:29
9/Hello It's Me
Todd Rundgren/3:51
10/Willin'
Lowell George/2:59
11/Back of a Car
Alex Chilton / Andy Hummell/2:32
12/Couldn't I Just Tell You
Todd Rundgren/3:27
13/Gimme Some Truth
John Lennon/3:27
14/Maggie May
Martin Quittenton / Rod Stewart/5:32
15/Everything I Own
David Gates/3:09
16/Beware of Darkness/Feat. Dhani Harrison
George Harrison/3:38
17/(What So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding
Nick Lowe/3:55
18/Killer Queen
Frederick Mercury/2:54
19/I Wanna Be Sedated
Jeff Hyman / Joey Ramone / John Cummings / Johnny Ramone /
Douglas Colvin / Dee Dee Ramone / Thomas Ederly / Tommy Ramone/2:08
20/Dreamin'
Deborah Harry / Christopher Stein/2:49
21/You Can Close Your Eyes
James Taylor/2:32
Lindsey Buckingham /Guitar
Natalie Byrd /Piano
Dhani Harrison /Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric)
Susanna Hoffs /Clapping, Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Steve Howe /Guitar (Electric)
Greg Leisz /Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Guitar (Rhythm), Mandolin, Pedal Steel, Slide Guitar
Ric Menck /Drums
Peter Phillips /Guitar
Matthew Sweet /Bass, Drums, Electric Harpsichord, Guitar, Guitar (12 String Electric), Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Mellotron, Organ, Percussion, Piano, Tabla, Ukulele, Vocals
REVIEW
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
A sequel to Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs' 2007 stroll through the '60s was perhaps inevitable, at least as inevitable as the decision to devote Under the Covers, Vol. 2 to the super sounds of the '70s. Sweet and Hoffs tend to pick '70s songs that are a bit more familiar than their '60s selections, never digging out a Me Decade equivalent of Marmalade's "I See the Rain" or the Zombies' "Care of Cell #44," but instead punctuating AM pop hits and FM rock staples like "Sugar Magnolia," "Second Hand News," "All the Young Dudes," "You're So Vain," "I've Seen All Good People," and "Maggie May" with power pop by the Raspberries ("Go All the Way"), Big Star ("Back of a Car"), and Todd Rundgren, who has no less than two songs from Something/Anything? featured here. The influence of that 1972 double LP can be heard in the similarly homespun production of Under the Covers, Vol. 2 but where Rundgren was open-ended, Sweet neatly ties up every loose end with the care of a pop fetishist, making sure all the harmonies and guitar licks are in place, never adding any untasteful elements. Sometimes, everything is a little bit too pat and pretty -- particularly on "Sugar Magnolia," whose processed guitars sparkle too brightly -- but the duo's enduring, endearing love for this music is evident, sometimes infectious, and, at its best, throws out some surprises, like Susanna's soulful reading of "Maggie May."
BIOGRAPHY
by Mark Deming
Susanna Hoffs is best-known as the lead singer and guitarist with the well-known pop group the Bangles, but Hoffs has also enjoyed an impressive career as a solo artist and a collaborator with a wide range of artists. Hoffs was born in Newport Beach, California on January 17, 1959; her father, Joshua Hoffs, was a physician, while her mother, Tamar Simon Hoffs, was a screenwriter and film director. Susanna was the second of three children, and she and her siblings learned to play guitar from their uncle, a folk musician who also built dulcimers. Hoffs grew up on classic AM radio pop and literate, folk-influenced artists such as Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt; she enjoyed singing with family and friends, but was more interested in pursuing acting or dance as a career (she played a small role in the 1978 film Stony Island, an acclaimed independent feature co-written by her mother) until she enrolled as a ballet student at UC Berkeley.
After her big brother passed along albums by the Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads, and Susanna saw Patti Smith perform in San Francisco, she became a quick convert to the new wave, and formed an informal band with her brother and David Roback, a friend from the neighborhood who played guitar. While the trio proved short-lived, Hoffs and Roback, who were a couple for a while, recorded some living-room demos that emboldened her to form a band. (Echoes of these unreleased recordings can be heard on the 1984 album Rainy Day, coordinated by Roback after he became leader of the acclaimed Paisley Underground band Rain Parade; Hoffs contributes striking lead vocals to versions of the Velvet Underground's "I'll Be Your Mirror" and Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine.")
Looking for like-minded musicians, Hoffs answered an ad in an L.A. weekly newspaper, The Recycler, in late 1980 and met guitarist Vicki Peterson and her sister Debbi Peterson, who played drums; the three shared a fondness for '60s-influened pop/rock and the Petersons were impressed with Hoffs' vocal abilities. The three formed a band called the Colours that would quickly evolve into the Bangs, and became the Bangles after a threat of legal action from another group called the Bangs. the Bangles would become bone fide superstars in the '80s, scoring two multi-platinum albums (1986's Different Light and 1988's Everything) and a handful of hit singles (including "Manic Monday," "Walk Like an Egyptian," and "Eternal Flame"), but as their fame rose, so did tensions within the group, compounded by the media's focus on Hoffs as the "star" of the act. Though all four members wrote and sang, Hoffs received the lion's share of the press as the principle lead vocalist, and when she was cast in The Allnighter, a comedy written and directed by Tamar Simon Hoffs, Susanna was made the focus of the film's advertising and publicity campaign, which unwittingly helped upset the balance of the band. By the end of 1989, the Bangles broke up.
In 1991, Hoffs released her debut solo album, When You're a Boy (the title comes from the David Bowie tune "Boys Keep Swinging," which Hoffs covered), but while the song "My Side o the Bed" fared well as a single and received steady MTV play, the album was a commercial and critical disappointment, and Hoffs subsequently took several years off to focus on her personal life. In 1993, Hoffs married film director Jay Roach, and they welcomed their first child two years later. In 1996, Hoffs' self-titled sophomore album was released to enthusiastic reviews, though once again it failed to sell as well as expected. In 1997, she teamed up with Matthew Sweet, Christopher Ward, and Mike Meyers to form Ming Tea, a fictive British rock band who appeared in Jay Roach's comedy Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, and they recorded a tune for the film's soundtrack, "BBC." Ming Tea gained something of a cult following after Austin Powers became a hit, and they also appeared in the film's two sequels.
In addition to covering "The Look of Love" and "What's It All About, Alfie" for the Powers' films, Hoffs reunited the Bangles to record the song "Get the Girl" for 1999's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; the group subsequently set out on tour, and returned to the studio to record a new album, 2003's Doll Revolution. (The title came from Elvis Costello's song "Tear Off Your Own Head [It's a Doll Revolution]," and Costello apparently approved of Hoffs' vocal on their cover, inviting her to sing it at a concert released on his 2011 live album Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook!!)
In 2006, Hoffs and her Ming Tea cohort Matthew Sweet teamed up to record a duet album, Under the Covers, Vol. 1, in which they interpreted 15 ‘60s pop classics. The album earned rave reviews, and in 2009 the pair returned with Under the Covers, Vol. 2, which focused on songs of the '70s. Sweet and Hoffs also toured together as Sid ‘n' Susie, the name being a play on Sweet's Ming Tea character name, Sid Belvedere. (Hoffs' Ming Tea name was the far more British Gillian Shagwell.) Sweet and Hoffs crossed paths in the studio again when he was tapped to produce a new Bangles album in 2011, Sweetheart of the Sun. In 2012, Hoffs released her third solo album, Someday, a collection dominated by songs she wrote in collaboration with guitarist and tunesmith Andrew Brassell.
BIOGRAPHY
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
After spending the '80s as an unappreciated jangle pop guitarist with Oh-OK and Lloyd Cole, as well as a solo artist, Matthew Sweet emerged in 1991 as the leading figure of the American power pop revival. Like his British counterparts Teenage Fanclub, Sweet adhered to traditional songcraft, yet subverted the form by adding noisy post-punk guitar and flourishes of country-rock, resulting in an amalgam of the Beatles, Big Star, R.E.M., and Neil Young. Recorded with guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, Sweet's third album, Girlfriend (1991), became a word-of-mouth critical and commercial hit over the course of 1992, with its title track reaching the Top Five on the Modern Rock charts. For the next five years, as alternative rock was the dominant commercial force in rock & roll, Sweet was a popular concert attraction, and his reputation as an alternative pop singer/songwriter was at its peak: his next two records, Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995), were both critically acclaimed and relatively successful albums, with the latter reaching gold status and making many year-end best-of lists. Beginning with 1997's Blue Sky on Mars, Sweet settled into cult status, and while he wasn't enjoying the success of his previous records, most power pop records of the latter half of the '90s were indebted to Girlfriend.
Matthew Sweet began playing music while he was a high-school student in his native Lincoln, Nebraska. Upon his graduation in 1983, he decided to attend the University of Georgia in Athens because of its burgeoning underground music scene. Once he arrived at college, he met Lynda Stipe and joined her band, Oh-OK, in time to play on their second EP, the Mitch Easter-produced Furthermore What, which was released late in 1983. The following year, he and Oh-OK drummer David Pierce formed Buzz of Delight, releasing Sound Castles later that year. Over the course of 1984 and 1985, Sweet cut a demo tape with producer Don Dixon. Columbia Records heard the Buzz of Delight record and the demo and offered him a contract in 1985. Upon signing with Columbia, he relocated to New York and recorded his debut, Inside. Released in 1986, Inside featured Sweet playing nearly all of the instruments on the record, supported by a drum machine; the album also featured several cameos, including Chris Stamey, Fred Maher, Anton Fier, and Aimee Mann. That same year, Sweet guested on Blast of Silence, an album by Fier's band the Golden Palominos.
Despite positive reviews, Inside was ignored upon its release and Columbia dropped Sweet. In 1988, he signed with A&M Records and recorded his second album, Earth. Produced by Fred Maher and released in 1989, Earth again featured Sweet as a one-man band, augmented by guitarists Robert Quine (Lou Reed, Richard Hell) and Richard Lloyd (Television). The album failed to make any impact, and A&M dropped Sweet as he was working on his third album in 1990. Over the next year, he earned money by touring as Lloyd Cole's guitarist while shopping a demo of his album to various labels, with little success. Eventually, the president of Zoo signed him upon overhearing the demo in an office. Girlfriend, an album largely inspired by the dissolution of his marriage, was the first album Sweet recorded with a live band, and its sound -- which was powered by Lloyd and Quine -- was considerably more immediate and raw than its predecessors. Upon its late 1991 release, Girlfriend earned strong reviews and "Divine Intervention" became a moderate hit, but it wasn't until the spring of 1992, when the title track took off, that the album became a genuine hit. By the end of the year, Girlfriend had gone gold and Sweet had moved to Los Angeles.
Sweet recorded the follow-up to Girlfriend with producer Richard Dashut, who had previously been best known for his work with Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham. Again featuring Quine and Lloyd, the resulting Altered Beast was messier than Girlfriend and consequently received mixed reviews upon release in early 1993, yet it became a sizable college radio hit on the strength of the modern rock and MTV hits "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule." After releasing the stopgap EP Son of Altered Beast in the spring of 1994, Sweet recorded his fifth album, this time with a more commercial producer -- Brendan O'Brien -- who had previously worked with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Released in the spring of 1995, 100% Fun received Sweet's strongest reviews to date and went gold on the strength of "Sick of Myself," his first single to scrape the bottom reaches of the pop charts.
Following 100% Fun, Sweet parted ways with Lloyd and Quine, but retained O'Brien for 1997's Blue Sky on Mars. Despite the strong initial placing for its lead single "Where You Get Love," Blue Sky on Mars received mixed reviews upon its spring release, and it failed to match the success of its immediate predecessor. In Reverse followed in 1999, and the best-of collection Time Capsule arrived a year later. Hip-O released To Understand: The Early Recordings of Matthew Sweet in 2002, a collection that Sweet followed up with the Japanese-only release Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu. He returned to the domestic studio in 2004 for Living Things, followed by a collection of choice covers with ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs called Under the Covers, Vol. 1 in 2006. In 2008, Sweet released Sunshine Lies, an all-new collection of studio material that was warmly received by both fans and critics alike, followed by Under the Covers, Vol. 2 (again with Hoffs) in 2009. Two years later, Sweet hit the road in celebration of Girlfriend's 20th anniversary, playing the album in its entirety each night. That same fall, he also released a new record, Modern Art.
''UNDER THE COVERS, VOL. 2''
JULY 21 2009
77:42
1/Sugar Magnolia
Robert Hunter / Bob Weir/3:32
2/Go All the Way
Wally Bryson / Eric Carmen/3:33
3/Second Hand News/Feat. Lindsay Buckingham
Lindsey Buckingham/3:13
4/Bell Bottom Blues
Eric Clapton/5:02
5/All the Young Dudes
David Bowie/3:52
6/You're So Vain
Carly Simon/4:22
7/Here Comes My Girl
Mike Campbell / Tom Petty/4:22
8/I've Seen All Good People: Your Move/All Good People/Feat. Steve Howe
Jon Anderson / Chris Squire/7:29
9/Hello It's Me
Todd Rundgren/3:51
10/Willin'
Lowell George/2:59
11/Back of a Car
Alex Chilton / Andy Hummell/2:32
12/Couldn't I Just Tell You
Todd Rundgren/3:27
13/Gimme Some Truth
John Lennon/3:27
14/Maggie May
Martin Quittenton / Rod Stewart/5:32
15/Everything I Own
David Gates/3:09
16/Beware of Darkness/Feat. Dhani Harrison
George Harrison/3:38
17/(What So Funny 'bout) Peace, Love and Understanding
Nick Lowe/3:55
18/Killer Queen
Frederick Mercury/2:54
19/I Wanna Be Sedated
Jeff Hyman / Joey Ramone / John Cummings / Johnny Ramone /
Douglas Colvin / Dee Dee Ramone / Thomas Ederly / Tommy Ramone/2:08
20/Dreamin'
Deborah Harry / Christopher Stein/2:49
21/You Can Close Your Eyes
James Taylor/2:32
Lindsey Buckingham /Guitar
Natalie Byrd /Piano
Dhani Harrison /Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric)
Susanna Hoffs /Clapping, Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Steve Howe /Guitar (Electric)
Greg Leisz /Guitar, Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Guitar (Rhythm), Mandolin, Pedal Steel, Slide Guitar
Ric Menck /Drums
Peter Phillips /Guitar
Matthew Sweet /Bass, Drums, Electric Harpsichord, Guitar, Guitar (12 String Electric), Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric), Mellotron, Organ, Percussion, Piano, Tabla, Ukulele, Vocals
REVIEW
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
A sequel to Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs' 2007 stroll through the '60s was perhaps inevitable, at least as inevitable as the decision to devote Under the Covers, Vol. 2 to the super sounds of the '70s. Sweet and Hoffs tend to pick '70s songs that are a bit more familiar than their '60s selections, never digging out a Me Decade equivalent of Marmalade's "I See the Rain" or the Zombies' "Care of Cell #44," but instead punctuating AM pop hits and FM rock staples like "Sugar Magnolia," "Second Hand News," "All the Young Dudes," "You're So Vain," "I've Seen All Good People," and "Maggie May" with power pop by the Raspberries ("Go All the Way"), Big Star ("Back of a Car"), and Todd Rundgren, who has no less than two songs from Something/Anything? featured here. The influence of that 1972 double LP can be heard in the similarly homespun production of Under the Covers, Vol. 2 but where Rundgren was open-ended, Sweet neatly ties up every loose end with the care of a pop fetishist, making sure all the harmonies and guitar licks are in place, never adding any untasteful elements. Sometimes, everything is a little bit too pat and pretty -- particularly on "Sugar Magnolia," whose processed guitars sparkle too brightly -- but the duo's enduring, endearing love for this music is evident, sometimes infectious, and, at its best, throws out some surprises, like Susanna's soulful reading of "Maggie May."
BIOGRAPHY
by Mark Deming
Susanna Hoffs is best-known as the lead singer and guitarist with the well-known pop group the Bangles, but Hoffs has also enjoyed an impressive career as a solo artist and a collaborator with a wide range of artists. Hoffs was born in Newport Beach, California on January 17, 1959; her father, Joshua Hoffs, was a physician, while her mother, Tamar Simon Hoffs, was a screenwriter and film director. Susanna was the second of three children, and she and her siblings learned to play guitar from their uncle, a folk musician who also built dulcimers. Hoffs grew up on classic AM radio pop and literate, folk-influenced artists such as Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt; she enjoyed singing with family and friends, but was more interested in pursuing acting or dance as a career (she played a small role in the 1978 film Stony Island, an acclaimed independent feature co-written by her mother) until she enrolled as a ballet student at UC Berkeley.
After her big brother passed along albums by the Ramones, Blondie, and Talking Heads, and Susanna saw Patti Smith perform in San Francisco, she became a quick convert to the new wave, and formed an informal band with her brother and David Roback, a friend from the neighborhood who played guitar. While the trio proved short-lived, Hoffs and Roback, who were a couple for a while, recorded some living-room demos that emboldened her to form a band. (Echoes of these unreleased recordings can be heard on the 1984 album Rainy Day, coordinated by Roback after he became leader of the acclaimed Paisley Underground band Rain Parade; Hoffs contributes striking lead vocals to versions of the Velvet Underground's "I'll Be Your Mirror" and Bob Dylan's "I'll Keep It with Mine.")
Looking for like-minded musicians, Hoffs answered an ad in an L.A. weekly newspaper, The Recycler, in late 1980 and met guitarist Vicki Peterson and her sister Debbi Peterson, who played drums; the three shared a fondness for '60s-influened pop/rock and the Petersons were impressed with Hoffs' vocal abilities. The three formed a band called the Colours that would quickly evolve into the Bangs, and became the Bangles after a threat of legal action from another group called the Bangs. the Bangles would become bone fide superstars in the '80s, scoring two multi-platinum albums (1986's Different Light and 1988's Everything) and a handful of hit singles (including "Manic Monday," "Walk Like an Egyptian," and "Eternal Flame"), but as their fame rose, so did tensions within the group, compounded by the media's focus on Hoffs as the "star" of the act. Though all four members wrote and sang, Hoffs received the lion's share of the press as the principle lead vocalist, and when she was cast in The Allnighter, a comedy written and directed by Tamar Simon Hoffs, Susanna was made the focus of the film's advertising and publicity campaign, which unwittingly helped upset the balance of the band. By the end of 1989, the Bangles broke up.
In 1991, Hoffs released her debut solo album, When You're a Boy (the title comes from the David Bowie tune "Boys Keep Swinging," which Hoffs covered), but while the song "My Side o the Bed" fared well as a single and received steady MTV play, the album was a commercial and critical disappointment, and Hoffs subsequently took several years off to focus on her personal life. In 1993, Hoffs married film director Jay Roach, and they welcomed their first child two years later. In 1996, Hoffs' self-titled sophomore album was released to enthusiastic reviews, though once again it failed to sell as well as expected. In 1997, she teamed up with Matthew Sweet, Christopher Ward, and Mike Meyers to form Ming Tea, a fictive British rock band who appeared in Jay Roach's comedy Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery, and they recorded a tune for the film's soundtrack, "BBC." Ming Tea gained something of a cult following after Austin Powers became a hit, and they also appeared in the film's two sequels.
In addition to covering "The Look of Love" and "What's It All About, Alfie" for the Powers' films, Hoffs reunited the Bangles to record the song "Get the Girl" for 1999's Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; the group subsequently set out on tour, and returned to the studio to record a new album, 2003's Doll Revolution. (The title came from Elvis Costello's song "Tear Off Your Own Head [It's a Doll Revolution]," and Costello apparently approved of Hoffs' vocal on their cover, inviting her to sing it at a concert released on his 2011 live album Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook!!)
In 2006, Hoffs and her Ming Tea cohort Matthew Sweet teamed up to record a duet album, Under the Covers, Vol. 1, in which they interpreted 15 ‘60s pop classics. The album earned rave reviews, and in 2009 the pair returned with Under the Covers, Vol. 2, which focused on songs of the '70s. Sweet and Hoffs also toured together as Sid ‘n' Susie, the name being a play on Sweet's Ming Tea character name, Sid Belvedere. (Hoffs' Ming Tea name was the far more British Gillian Shagwell.) Sweet and Hoffs crossed paths in the studio again when he was tapped to produce a new Bangles album in 2011, Sweetheart of the Sun. In 2012, Hoffs released her third solo album, Someday, a collection dominated by songs she wrote in collaboration with guitarist and tunesmith Andrew Brassell.
BIOGRAPHY
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
After spending the '80s as an unappreciated jangle pop guitarist with Oh-OK and Lloyd Cole, as well as a solo artist, Matthew Sweet emerged in 1991 as the leading figure of the American power pop revival. Like his British counterparts Teenage Fanclub, Sweet adhered to traditional songcraft, yet subverted the form by adding noisy post-punk guitar and flourishes of country-rock, resulting in an amalgam of the Beatles, Big Star, R.E.M., and Neil Young. Recorded with guitarists Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine, Sweet's third album, Girlfriend (1991), became a word-of-mouth critical and commercial hit over the course of 1992, with its title track reaching the Top Five on the Modern Rock charts. For the next five years, as alternative rock was the dominant commercial force in rock & roll, Sweet was a popular concert attraction, and his reputation as an alternative pop singer/songwriter was at its peak: his next two records, Altered Beast (1993) and 100% Fun (1995), were both critically acclaimed and relatively successful albums, with the latter reaching gold status and making many year-end best-of lists. Beginning with 1997's Blue Sky on Mars, Sweet settled into cult status, and while he wasn't enjoying the success of his previous records, most power pop records of the latter half of the '90s were indebted to Girlfriend.
Matthew Sweet began playing music while he was a high-school student in his native Lincoln, Nebraska. Upon his graduation in 1983, he decided to attend the University of Georgia in Athens because of its burgeoning underground music scene. Once he arrived at college, he met Lynda Stipe and joined her band, Oh-OK, in time to play on their second EP, the Mitch Easter-produced Furthermore What, which was released late in 1983. The following year, he and Oh-OK drummer David Pierce formed Buzz of Delight, releasing Sound Castles later that year. Over the course of 1984 and 1985, Sweet cut a demo tape with producer Don Dixon. Columbia Records heard the Buzz of Delight record and the demo and offered him a contract in 1985. Upon signing with Columbia, he relocated to New York and recorded his debut, Inside. Released in 1986, Inside featured Sweet playing nearly all of the instruments on the record, supported by a drum machine; the album also featured several cameos, including Chris Stamey, Fred Maher, Anton Fier, and Aimee Mann. That same year, Sweet guested on Blast of Silence, an album by Fier's band the Golden Palominos.
Despite positive reviews, Inside was ignored upon its release and Columbia dropped Sweet. In 1988, he signed with A&M Records and recorded his second album, Earth. Produced by Fred Maher and released in 1989, Earth again featured Sweet as a one-man band, augmented by guitarists Robert Quine (Lou Reed, Richard Hell) and Richard Lloyd (Television). The album failed to make any impact, and A&M dropped Sweet as he was working on his third album in 1990. Over the next year, he earned money by touring as Lloyd Cole's guitarist while shopping a demo of his album to various labels, with little success. Eventually, the president of Zoo signed him upon overhearing the demo in an office. Girlfriend, an album largely inspired by the dissolution of his marriage, was the first album Sweet recorded with a live band, and its sound -- which was powered by Lloyd and Quine -- was considerably more immediate and raw than its predecessors. Upon its late 1991 release, Girlfriend earned strong reviews and "Divine Intervention" became a moderate hit, but it wasn't until the spring of 1992, when the title track took off, that the album became a genuine hit. By the end of the year, Girlfriend had gone gold and Sweet had moved to Los Angeles.
Sweet recorded the follow-up to Girlfriend with producer Richard Dashut, who had previously been best known for his work with Fleetwood Mac and Lindsey Buckingham. Again featuring Quine and Lloyd, the resulting Altered Beast was messier than Girlfriend and consequently received mixed reviews upon release in early 1993, yet it became a sizable college radio hit on the strength of the modern rock and MTV hits "The Ugly Truth" and "Time Capsule." After releasing the stopgap EP Son of Altered Beast in the spring of 1994, Sweet recorded his fifth album, this time with a more commercial producer -- Brendan O'Brien -- who had previously worked with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots. Released in the spring of 1995, 100% Fun received Sweet's strongest reviews to date and went gold on the strength of "Sick of Myself," his first single to scrape the bottom reaches of the pop charts.
Following 100% Fun, Sweet parted ways with Lloyd and Quine, but retained O'Brien for 1997's Blue Sky on Mars. Despite the strong initial placing for its lead single "Where You Get Love," Blue Sky on Mars received mixed reviews upon its spring release, and it failed to match the success of its immediate predecessor. In Reverse followed in 1999, and the best-of collection Time Capsule arrived a year later. Hip-O released To Understand: The Early Recordings of Matthew Sweet in 2002, a collection that Sweet followed up with the Japanese-only release Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu. He returned to the domestic studio in 2004 for Living Things, followed by a collection of choice covers with ex-Bangle Susanna Hoffs called Under the Covers, Vol. 1 in 2006. In 2008, Sweet released Sunshine Lies, an all-new collection of studio material that was warmly received by both fans and critics alike, followed by Under the Covers, Vol. 2 (again with Hoffs) in 2009. Two years later, Sweet hit the road in celebration of Girlfriend's 20th anniversary, playing the album in its entirety each night. That same fall, he also released a new record, Modern Art.
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