Matthew Sweet - Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet
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CD Details
Artist: Matthew SweetEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2000-09-26
Music Label: Volcano
Soundtracks:
- Divine Intervention
- I've Been Waiting
- Girlfriend
- You Don't Love Me
- Time Capsule
- The Ugly Truth (Acoustic Version)
- Devil With The Green Eyes
- Someone To Pull The Trigger
- Sick Of Myself
- We're The Same
- Where You Get Love
- Until You Break
- Behind The Smile
- If Time Permits
- What Matters
- Hide
- Ready
- So Far
Music reviews of Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet
Music Review: If you've come this far, you're not going to be disappointed.
Rating: 4 Stars
It's a testament to Matthew Sweet's songwriting ability that this is a best-of that misses so many of his highs. In fact, his albums also miss some of his highs. Like many Sweet fans, this reviewer's favorite (and unfortunately omitted here) tracks include the soundtrack contributions such as "Happiness" (Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy) and "Farther Down" (Can't Hardly Wait).
This disc is, however, ideal for a casually interested fan of excellent power pop that owes something to the Beatles, Beach Boys and Byrds, as well as Television (Richard Lloyd is a frequent contributor to Sweet's songs), Neil Young, Big Star, R.E.M. and other more guitar-heavy and "crunchy" and/or "twangy" alt-rock power-pop acts.
"Girlfriend", "Sick of Myself", "Time Capsule", "I've Been Waiting", and "Where You Get Love" simply had to be included, and their appearance here make the disc worth the price alone. Yes, sadly, "Winona" and "Evangeline" were omitted, but Girlfriend, from which those two songs originate, is an album also worth it's price (and, in fact, an even more enjoyable musical experience, albeit demanding more time to reveal its true worth), meaning it's more lucrative to spread the disc space around more evenly across all five of Matthew Sweet's albums from the '90s, so that casual fans can get a taste of each album's offerings, in a more quickly digestible manner.
On that level, this compilation succeeds extraordinarily well. It's just that his best work doesn't fit into a mere eighty minutes, especially when some of his best songs, for whatever reason, don't even make it to albums or even those soundtracks (like "Strange Faces", a beautiful home-recorded piano ballad only found in demo form). This disc is also just a ridiculously enjoyable listen for fans of said guitar-heavy (and sometimes piano-based) power-pop/alt-rock. Only die-hard fans lament the omission of tracks like "Come to California", "In Too Deep", "Reaching Out" and the like. Casual fans who've never heard these songs and don't want to waste too much money on more than one disc shouldn't be disappointed with the music that is actually included.
A caveat: If your lyrical tastes are more geared towards, say, James Mercer (Shins) style oblique and nearly indecipherable poetry, Matthew Sweet's simpler (and for this reviewer's money, more charming) lyrics may not be for you. That said, his unpretentious lyrics can still frequently (especially on these tracks) lay bare stunningly honest emotion and/or fun conceits that play very well against the downright filthy-fun foil of the lead guitar of the excellent Richard Lloyd, Robert Quine and Pete Phillips.
Another caveat: Don't be surprised if, like me, you end up ravenously devouring everything else of his, eventually rendering this purchase practically redundant. In fact, Mr. Sweet's Girlfriend is one of my "desert island" albums, along with R.E.M.'s Murmur, Pixies' Doolittle, The Beatles' Revolver and Television's Marquee Moon. Kimi, Altered Beast and In Reverse are ridiculously awesome, too...
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