Power Pop Plus: A Look Back at 2020...and More
John M. Borack explores some of the best of 2020 and a brand new release from Matthew Sweet
Author:
Sweet's fifteenth solo effort is one of his finest in recent memory. Like Paul McCartney's
III,
Catspaw is a grower rather than an instant knockout: songs such as "Give a Little," "Challenge the Gods," "Come Home," and "At a Loss" will sneak up on you and provide a guitar-fueled gut punch given half a chance. Speaking of which,
Catspaw is most definitely a full-on guitar record: Sweet handles all the six-string action here and does a helluva job, with the beefy sound harkening back to Richard Lloyd and Robert Quine's work on Sweet's 1990s releases. (Sweet handles all instrumentation himself here, save for longtime cohort Ric Menck's typically rock-steady drums.) Only one of the dozen tunes clocks in at longer than four minutes, and the relative brevity of the songs allows Sweet to say what he has to say, tear through a kickin' guitar solo (the one that fires up "At a Loss" is particularly inspired), and move on. Pop purists might bemoan the lack of an "I've Been Waiting" or a "We're the Same," but then again, there are folks who wish the Beatles had never progressed further than "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Fun fact: the guitar figure than opens "Hold On Tight" bears a strong resemblance to the main riff from the Youngbloods' "Get Together."