AR: 100% Fun

Matthew Sweet - 100% Fun (1995)*

* - For all my pretense of mysterious personality, intellectual complexity and interest in challenging music ... I sure do own a lot of power pop. Sigh...

It's not like Matthew Sweet invented the pop juxtaposition of the sad and the saccharine; happy verses and choruses have been twisted by morose bridges at least since Lennon/McCartney claimed they could work it out. But Sweet sits squarely in this pop tradition and embodies the contrast well within the wire-horned frames of the '90s arch-ironic hipster, delivering tight three minute guitar vessels that sound oh-so-upbeat while discussing broken relationships and self-loathing. The hyper-ironic stance really captures it - angry post-punk fuzz guitars cut the jangle pop with a rough edge that makes those Sweet melodies oddly sinister, and rock-star worship-me guitar solos blow away the introverted singer-songwriter personality that must have crafted these sensitive tunes. It's a shimmery, engaging exercise in aural-emotional dissonance that heavily influenced indie rock in the years to come. The M.O. is far from subtle - the phrase "100% fun" comes from a line in Kurt Cobain's suicide note, for cripe's sake - but Sweet pulled it off with serious aplomb and tight songcraft. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable album that stands up as more than a document reporting where Weezer, The Shins, Elliott Smith, etc., got at least some of their inspiration.

100% Fun is sans doubt a seminal alt-rock album from Matthew Sweet's relatively short-lived heyday, but that doesn't necessarily make it a flawless work. Just to keep the irony contrast motif running - and to deliver a line usually reserved for job interviews - this album's biggest strength is its weakness. Namely that the front half is so strong as to render the album top-heavy and a trip downhill. This entails the positive, natch - "Sick of Myself" is a friggin' alt-rock masterpiece, a beast of an album-opener that click-click-click-clicks into being and delivers straight-up Truth as it details the experience of a lovee causing the lover to self-deprecate. Seriously, I know I am given to hyperbole, but this is a masterful tune that gets me every time - I generally don't even hear lyrics, but these slay me:

Verse 1:

You don't know

How you move me

Deconstruct me

And consume me

I'm all used up

I'm out of luck

I am starstruck

Chorus:

There's something in your eyes

That is keeping hope alive

'Cause I'm sick of myself when I look at you

Something is beautiful and true

In a world that's ugly and a lie

It's hard to even want to try

I'm beginning to think

Baby you don't know

Verse 2:

I'll take or leave

The hope to breathe

The choice to leave you

I'll throw away

A chance at greatness

Just to make this

Dream come into play

I don't know if I'm wide awake

(Chorus repeat)

[Badass Guitar Outro]

(Chorus repeat)

[Badass Guitar Outro, Now With False Ending Excellence]

An all-time best, and one of the few honest love songs out there. The rest of Side A is no slouch, either - "Not When I Need It" (dios mio check that Elliott Smith outro), "We're the Same," and "Giving It Back" are all gems in a similar vein, and "Lost My Mind" branches out with a dose of swirling psychedelia that breaks pattern but intrigues all the same. Side B, as noted, simply can't keep up - it's pleasant enough, but the drop-off is noticeable and renders the overall experience disappointing. Consistency throughout is one of my requirements, so while an EP of the first four tracks would have left me singing praises, 100% Fun invariably leaves me with a sour taste. (The album closer, "Smog Moon," has garnered its share of praise, but it treads too much in Oasis-esque bombast territory for my tastes and may play a large part in said sour taste). So while I'll fully agree that this is an emphatically good entry by Sweet and emblematic of the power pop genre, the album has always fallen short for me - I have the same experience with it today as I had the day I got it, which for unknown reasons I remember was Christmas 1995.

So check 100% Fun - it's tighter than Sweet's other work, so if you like your pop scraggly, go that way, but it's polished scruffy-sappy aesthetic hits some of the heights that he was after. It paved the way for alt/indie acts to follow, and even if Sweet never really hit that elusive homer, he did lay down some great work here.

Status: Recommended (solid)

Nyet's Fave: "Sick of Myself"