Review: Matthew Sweet Goes It Alone on 'Catspaw'

Since Matthew Sweet emerged in 1991 with the surprise hit “Girlfriend,” a power pop respite in a time when hair metal was handing off to grunge as the dominant style, he has quietly released a dozen albums with his band, as well as collaborating with everyone from Fleetwood Mac's Lindsey Buckingham to The Bangles' Susanna Hoff. But now Sweet is going where he's never gone before with his 15th album, Catspaw, recording almost completely solo, with only longtime bandmate Ric Menck providing percussion.

Solo efforts are nothing new in 2021, a time when COVID-19 restrictions have forced artists to either remotely record their parts to be mixed later or provide their own accompaniment, but that wasn't the reasons for Sweet's solo turn on Catspaw, which finished recording just before the pandemic hit. Instead, it's a “can I do it?” album from Sweet, a challenge to himself to step into roles he isn't comfortable with and be successful.

What is most surprising is how guitar-heavy Catspaw is. Sweet is not a known lead guitarist, which he admits in his press materials, saying “I play free form. Nothing is too labored over and that was important. It’s spontaneous.” Indeed, Sweet isn't ever going to be mistaken for Jimi Hendrix or even Rick Nielsen, but he wisely leans into this, channeling lead guitarists like Angus Young or Johnny Ramone who made instrumental simplicity work, giving the album a raw drive that hasn't been seen before in Matthew Sweet's albums.

Lyrically, Catspaw is the midpoint between Girlfriend and his harder rocking and darker lyriced Altered Beast. A number of the songs ruminate on aging, the inevitable hurdle for any artist lucky enough to be successful for a number of years. The Who once wrote “hope I die before I get old” before having to find their own way forward when none of them except Keith Moon fulfilled that desire. Sweet has never, as far as I know, feared aging to that level, but there's no doubting it's on his mind. Rock and roll is a young man's game, and on songs like “Best of Me,” Sweet wonders if he can still compete, singing “what if I need to just accept it, and all I do is fight?”

Another standout, hard driving album opener “Blown Away” crashes in with a churning and heavily distorted guitar riff. It serves to emphasize the song's world weary lyrics such as “I'm blown away. Now there's hell to pay. Time is up and down, I'm going down. As I'm torn apart, and it's just the start. Even if I had my way... I couldn't stay.”

But it isn't all darkness in Matthew Sweet's world. The uptempo “Challenge the Gods” is a defiant middle finger to The Who's famous mantra, refusing to accept that he's past it, insisting “do what you want you want to do, go where you want to go and challenge the gods to act.” It's a much needed break from the darker tracks and more cerebral ruminations, instead being a celebratory declaration of independence.

It's easy to compare any act like Matthew Sweet to the Patron Saints of Power Pop, Cheap Trick, but the better analogue here is The Jayhawks, no surprise since Sweet and Jayhawks vocalist Gary Louris have worked together in the past. But any comparison does Sweet a disservice. Catspaw, despite its differences from the rest of his catalog, is all Matthew Sweet. It doesn't “move the needle” for power pop, taking it into new directions, but that's ok. Sweet's experiment here isn't genre-hopping but simply to see if a truly solo effort was possible. In that, Sweet has succeeded, with Catspaw serving as a refreshingly straightforward celebration of power pop's best traits.