Matthew Sweet at Turf Club, St Paul (16 Feb 2024)

Alt-rock trailblazer Matthew Sweet is currently on a small Midwest tour, his first live shows in nearly four-year. The sold-out show at the Turf Club, in St Paul, last night was met with mostly older, but enthusiastic, fans, in anticipation of hearing their favorite Matthew Sweet songs live again.


Sweet has a great live band, which he personally assembled. The biggest names here are drummer Debbi Peterson, from The Bangles and bassist Paul Chastain from Velvet Crush. Guitarist John Mormon and “new kid” acoustic/backup vocals Adrian Carter, makes up the rest of the full band.

Matthew Sweet ticketstub (20 Feb 2001)

As I previously mentioned, when I saw Sweet at First Avenue on February 20, 2001, that “my very first concert was for Matthew Sweet, during his “Girlfriend” Tour in 1992. I saw him in Fresno, California, and I believe the venue was the Cadillac Club (I’m almost certain, but I could be wrong).”



If you’re not familiar with Sweet, he started in various bands, like The Specs, The Dialtones, Community Trolls (with Michael Stipe), Oh-OK, The Buzz of Delight, but it wasn’t until he went solo did his career took off.



Of course, still being in high school, I didn’t really discover Matthew Sweet until he was already signed with Zoo Entertainment (A&M Records), and the song “Girlfriend”, the title track from his 1991 album, was played on MTV’s 120 Minutes.



So, I’ve always had a soft spot for Matthew Sweet, and I have always loved his pop/rock songs with those ‘sweet’ harmonies.



As you can see from the setlist, he did play a lot of songs from that 90s time period that made him famous, including the intro track “The Ugly Truth”, the difficult to play live “Time Capsule” (this was a big hit at the time), the depressing-but-harmonic “Someone to Pull the Trigger”, “Devil With the Green Eyes” and well-known songs “I’ve Been Waiting” & “Evangeline.” Of course, he saved his biggest hit song for the encore.



Note, if you look at the photo of the setlist, it shows “Stars Explode” on the encore. That song was played earlier in the set…



Matthew Sweet also spent a lot of time talking about his inspiration for his cat artwork (which he titles “Midsommar” named after the a24 film – which I agreed that it’s one of my favorite horror film). The story, from start to finish, is long… which I will spare you the details. Let’s just say that he’s incredible proud of the artwork and even tattooed it on his arm and ordered not one, but two, custom drumhead kit art.



While the Midsommar album artwork and various vector art merchandise were produced, the new album has not been recorded. Any funds fans purchased on this tour will likely go into recording the upcoming album.



And speaking of recording studios, he did have a funny story about recording In Reverse (when they’re about to play “If Time Permits”), he invited Brian Wilson, who lived nearby, to sit in to hear them record that album. Wilson showed up and sat in the back, listening to recording of one of their songs. When it was over, Wilson, animated as he was, jumped up off his seat and yelled, “I love it! I F***** LOVE IT!!” Sweet seemed really happy that the In Reverse album was Brian Wilson approved.



Based on the strong fanbase, I’m certain Matthew Sweet will return when his new album is finally recorded. While we wait, in the meantime, Matthew Sweet has released an archival live record album Live at Grant Park Chicago July 1993. The source is taken from Metro Mobile Recording for Chicago radio station WXRT, but was remixed from the original DAT source by engineer Brian Kehew … so you’re going to hear the best audio quality from this live recording. You can purchase the album here.



Opening up the show was Alabama’s musician and podcaster Abe Partridge. If you like lyrics (and funny and clever lines), you’ll like Partridge, who comes off as American funnyman, who happens to play music with his steel guitarist. He was really grateful for the opportunity to open for Sweet, because he said he hadn’t been to many of these venues on this tour.



My favorite song on his set was “Abe Partridge’s 403d Freakout”, which has a long breakdown about what if Albert Einstein had switch places with John Lennon. In this timeline, Einstein would marry a girl from Hiroshima, while Lennon would work on developing the atomic bomb.

Matthew Sweet and Abe Partridge’s last Midwest show is tonight (Feb 17), at the Waiting Room, in Omaha, Nebraska.

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