My instant reaction to Matthew Sweet’s new album “Catspaw†was it is the best thing he’s done in at least a decade. My second: Who was the guitarist whose solos and riffs brought the bite and dark edge to his power pop?
Maybe Sweet had brought back Richard Lloyd, who played on “Girlfriend,†his 1991 classic, or Ivan Julian, the New York punk guitarist who, like Lloyd, recorded and toured with the Lincoln native in the ’90s.
Nope. It’s Sweet, who has long played rhythm guitar and bass on his recordings, but never lead.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to play lead guitar on the next record. That would make it different from the other work,’†he said. “That was really the only criterion I had for it. That was really fun to do. I really dug it.â€
Sweet, who had played lead guitar on his demos for years, said he "was too nervous to do it in front of somebody in the studio.†But the notion that he could pick up the guitar and suddenly be able to play lead goes back to when Sweet was a budding bassist, playing along with records in the basement of his family’s Lincoln home.
“When I was about 13, I had the concept I’d actually thought about, that even if I didn’t play the bass for awhile, I’d improve as a bass player anyway,†he said. “I also included, after I’d had that idea that I would, when I was old, I’d be able to play things I never really learned, just because I’ve been around music so long. So I could play lead guitar.
“There’s a weird continuity to that with this record. I’m about as old as I was imagining then, and I actually did it.â€
Sweet — who played rhythm guitar and bass and added the lead and layered “Pet Soundsâ€-like harmony backing vocals — had just one collaborator on the album: longtime drummer Ric Menck, who came down from Minneapolis to record at Sweet’s Black Squirrel Submarine home studio in Omaha.
Playing the leads around the melodies he’d crafted and sung, with Lloyd-like attack and abandon, Sweet created a record that adds an urgency to pop numbers like “Best of Me†and “Coming Son,†gets psychedelic on “Hold on Tight†and touches the heart with ballads a la “No Surprise.â€
Those sounds and songs hearken back to “Girlfriend†and its follow-ups, “Altered Beast†and “100% Fun,†then combine some of the softer touches heard on Sweet’s albums made since he and his wife, Lisa, moved from Los Angeles to Omaha seven years ago.
Completing the process, Sweet, who mixed the album, got legendary 12-time Grammy winner Bob Ludwig to master the record. Ludwig, who had mastered other Sweet albums — including “Earth,†his 1989 second album, and “Girlfriend" — completed the mastering in February.
“I wrote Bob a note thanking him for it,†Sweet said. “He wrote back, telling me to watch out for the coronavirus thing, the pandemic thing. And be safe.â€
That means “Catspaw†technically isn’t a pandemic record. Or is it?
“I feel like the e-record feels like my pandemic record, even though all we did was hook up with Omnivore and doing the artwork for the cover after March,†Sweet said. “But if you listen to the record, there’s a lot of it about being solitary, edge-of-doom-type songs, like the first song 'Blown Away.' It weirdly kind of fits. The ‘Catspaw’ might as well be the pandemic coming down on us.â€
“Mostly all I’ve done for the last year is consume massive amounts of movies, TV and streaming stuff,†he said. “I want to make a list of everything I've watched during the pandemic. It will be a massive amount of stuff; it has to be hundreds of movies and TV shows.â€
Sweet was doing interviews from his Omaha home this week to promote “Catspaw.†Then, he said, he and Lisa will be back to watching shows and movies on his large iMac monitor for a few months. Then, he’ll bring together his band and head out on tour.
â€I don’t mind being at home, but it cut off my only source of income,†Sweet said. “We were thinking maybe by summer or in the fall. But the way it is right now, with the death tolls so high, it makes me wonder if if will be as soon as fall. I don’t want to make my audience sick, and I don’t want to get sick.
"Touring is stressful for me anyway, and I have underlying conditions. So we won’t be going out until it’s safe, whenever that is.â€