![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/matthew_sweet_visulite.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAfter a couple albums\u2019 worth of searching for his signature style, Nebraska-born Matthew Sweet struck creative and commercial gold with his 1991 album Girlfriend<\/i>. Sweet\u2019s winning voice and thoughtful lyrics were joined not only by his enduring melodic sense \u2013 the man has a knowing way with a sharp melodic hook \u2013 but by some tasty, jagged and highly inventive lead guitar work, courtesy former Television axeman Richard Lloyd.<\/p>\n
Though Sweet shouldn\u2019t be considered a formulaic artist \u2013 his body of work is too varied to be diminished by that description \u2013 he learned all the right lessons from the success of Girlfriend<\/i>. He followed that album up with a string of chiming pop-with-teeth releases; that creative winning streak has now endured nearly two decades, across ten subsequent solo albums. Released May 18, Tomorrow\u2019s Daughter<\/i> is Sweet\u2019s latest; it\u2019s a sort of companion piece to 2017\u2019s Tomorrow Forever<\/i>.<\/p>\n
And while Lloyd hasn\u2019t been involved in Sweet\u2019s recent projects or concert tours, his approach to playing \u2013 virtuosic, gonzo guitar lines of the sort one rarely finds within the power pop idiom \u2013 remains a prominent feature of Sweet\u2019s work. Of late, guitarists including John Moremen (The Paul & John, The Orange Peels, Flotation Device) and Jason Victor (Dream Syndicate) have been among his six-string foils onstage and\/or on recordings.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sweet\u2019s current run of dates in support of Tomorrow\u2019s Daughter<\/i> included a May 25 date at Charlotte, N.C.\u2019s Visulite Theatre. After a brief but effective opening set from local band\u00a0 (their new release was produced by pop legend Mitch Easter, who was in the audience this night), Sweet and his band took the stage. His longtime rhythm section returned for this tour: bassist Paul Chastain and drummer Ric Menck (both of Velvet Crush) helped deliver Sweet\u2019s songs in superb fashion. For a handful of dates including the Charlotte show, Victor was in charge of spinning out the dizzying lead guitar parts; this he did in dazzling fashion, from start to finish.<\/p>\n
Victor did a fine job of splitting the difference between replicating the studio leads (many originally cut by Lloyd) and expressing his individuality as a precise, expressive and original instrumentalist. Meanwhile, at center stage, Sweet ran the band through a set heavy on classics (\u201cI\u2019ve Been Waiting,\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re the Same,\u201d \u201cSick of Myself\u201d and a dozen others), mixing in a few inevitably lesser-known tracks from his latest release.<\/p>\n
The new material didn\u2019t sound out of place among the well-known songs; that\u2019s a testament to the consistent quality and distinctive yet identifiable nature of Matthew Sweet\u2019s songs. Some pre-show difficulty with his standard amp rig (solved by instrument tech and Spongetones bassist Steve Stoeckel) seemed to throw Sweet ever-so-slightly off his game; after every song \u2013 and without exception \u2013 he turned his back to the audience to either fiddle with his amp or draw a pull from a water bottle.<\/p>\n
Under normal circumstances, that repeated turning away might have diminished the flow of a concert; oddly, in Sweet\u2019s case, it instead created its own kind of rhythm and pace for the show. Matthew Sweet and his band were in fine form this night, and the rapturous applause from the audience was in enthusiastic recognition of that fact. After a two-song encore, Menck and Victor returned to the stage, apparently expecting Chastain and Sweet to follow. But a house sound tech (not<\/i> Stoeckel) quickly appeared onstage and admonished the musicians that no, in fact, their show was over.<\/p>\n
That said, the audience in the nearly full house at the Visulite Theatre certainly got its money\u2019s worth, singing along to \u201cI\u2019ve Been Waiting\u201d and the long list of other Matthew Sweet classics performed this night.<\/p>\n
Postscript: I saw Sweet and his band again in Asheville in August 2018. They were even better.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a couple albums\u2019 worth of searching for his signature style, Nebraska-born Matthew Sweet struck creative and commercial gold with his 1991 album Girlfriend. Sweet\u2019s winning voice and thoughtful lyrics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,62,65],"tags":[1433,3494],"class_list":["post-15201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-shows","category-rawk","category-review","tag-matthew-sweet","tag-the-eyebrows","cat-44-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15203,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15201\/revisions\/15203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}