Breaking up is hard to do (Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend tour)

Last night the missus and I headed down to the 930 Club to see Matthew Sweet on his 20th Anniversary of Girlfriend tour. This is one of my most favorite albums ever. It's a power pop record but it more interestingly it is a fantastic guitar record. Robert Quine of Voivoid and Richard Lloyd of Television (who made probably the GREATEST guitar record ever) did the unique lead work on the record.

So Matthew does the whole record start to finish. Playing the role of Quine/Lloyd is some fellow named Dennis Taylor and he pulled off the crazy leads quite properly. The rhythm section were Paul Chastain and Ric Menck of another in the category of criminally-overlooked-bands Velvet Crush.

Matthew joked after the first three songs that they got the encore out of the way early. With the advent of CDs most of the "good" material is forced to the front. I guess that's a record company thing. It speaks to the short attention spans or just the inability of folks to find an hour to get cozy with a record. This is nothing new I guess. I am more inclined to enjoy the album as a whole; as a whole piece of art.

My favorite song off the record is not the expected ones: the title track or "Divine Intervention" or "I've Been Waiting" (though all are GREAT). My favorite is "You Don't Love Me."

There's sadness that permeates the entire record because this was written in the aftermath of his divorce. But this song really captures the feeling of breaking up; the real sadness that comes along with it, whether you initiated it or whether you didn't it's still a terrible feeling. I have never had a relationship end that didn't hurt like hell. I really like the part in the chorus where he goes "I think it's okay; if you gooooooo...awaaaaaaaay." Very pretty melody.

The show was a quick one. After doing all 15 tracks of the record they did a new one called "She Walks The Night" (which is really good, actually) and a couple other nuggets: "Sick Of Myself," "Time Capsule," and "We're The Same." There was some DJ thing happening later that night so they had to clear the joint out quickly. The band looked to be having a really good time.

Opening was a nice young British gal named Callaghan. She did only a handful of songs, two covers ("Piece of My Heart" and much to my glee "Folsom Prison Blues") and a few originals. The originals were quite good. I wound up buying her record when I got home from the show. She was up there by herself alternating between acoustic guitar and keyboard and it takes a lot of guts to do that.

Here's some pictures from the show: