How Sweet it is.

Various Artists-Altered Sweet: A Tribute to Matthew Sweet. Futureman Records' Keith Klingensmith knows his way around a tribute album, and 2016's Sloan tribute was one of the best of the genre. So to say this project covering another power pop luminary with a long track record of quality music was widely anticipated in the power pop community is a bit of an understatement, and unsurprisingly Futureman comes through here again. Like the Sloan tribute, Altered Sweet has a lineup dominated by artists I've featured on these pages, so the winning tribute formula of "songs you like covered by artists you like" is clearly present here.

Although Sweet has been active since the mid-to-late 80s and remains so through today, the bulk of the covers here are from his peak creative period in the 90s from Girlfriend through In Reverse. The title track of the former is probably Sweet's best-known track and Michael Carpenter (a master of covers himself with some 6 covers albums under his belt) does the honors here with a straightforward version. Lannie Flowers is a great choice for Girlfriend's jangle pop classic "I've Been Waiting", while Phil Ajjarupu has a breezy take on "Thought I Knew You" and the man with the plan, Klingensmith, handles the ultimate "feeling sorry for yourself" song "You Don't Love Me" with class. But as beloved as Girlfriend is, my favorite Sweet album is 1995's 100% Fun* and it too is well-represented here, with Greg Pope's vintage low-fi power pop making "Not When I Need It" sound like one of his own, Gretchen's Wheel's "Walk Out" sounding like a lost Aimee Mann track, and in the most radical re-imagining of the collection Simple Friend delivers an acoustic boy-girl folk-pop version of "Sick of Myself", one of Sweet's more heavier rocking tracks, proving its melody works well in either genre. 1997's Blue Sky on Mars is represented by Andy Reed's faithful reading of "Where You Get Love" complete with synths, while fellow Michiganer Nick Piunti tackles "Behind the Smile" with the guitars front and center and The Well Wishers rawk on "All Over My Head". And 1999's In Reverse (Sweet's most underrated album in my opinion) finds Paranoid Lovesick giving us a punchy version of "What Matters" and Donny Brown coming through with an excellent cover of my favorite Sweet ballad, "Hide".

Interestingly Altered Beast, the album from which the tribute derives its title, only has three covers here - Elvyn puts their jangly roots-pop stamp on "Time Capsule", Nick Bertling has a heavy version of "Falling" and Chris Richards & The Subtractions does Sweet proud with "Someone to Pull the Trigger". Also by my count, only 4 of the 27 covers come from outside those 90s albums: Trolley reaches back to 1986's "Inside" with "Quiet Her", The Hangabouts un-Earth "When I Feel Again" from 1989's Earth, Fireking offers "Dead Smile" from 2003's (originally Japan-only) Kimi Ga Suki, and Arvidson & Butterflies mines 2008's Sunshine Lies for "Byrdgirl", which is more rocking and less jangly than the title implies.

Futureman has hit another home run here, and I can only look forward to whatever artist Klingensmith turns his attention to next. (I helpfully suggested Marshall Crenshaw to him on Twitter, but we'll just have to see).

Bandcamp



*I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but the title "100% Fun" was Sweet's response to those who criticized Altered Beast for being "too dark" (it certainly wasn't the followup to Girlfriend many were expecting). And after Blue Sky on Mars wasn't well-received by the critics, Sweet responded on In Reverse with the none-too-subtle "Write Your Own Song", giving him the title of thinnest-skinned popster since 1970s Billy Joel.

CD of the Day, 5/9/13: VA-Drink a Toast to Innocence: A Tribute to Lite Rock

Perhaps the most anticipated release of 2013 to date has been Andrew Curry's "Monsters of Lite Rock" project, funded by Kickstarter, to assemble a compilation of those sort-of-cheesy "lite rock" (also known as "yacht rock") hits of the late 70s and early 80s covered by today's power pop artists. The Kickstarter was successful, and the fruits of Curry's (and the artists') labor is here with the double-disc, 28-track Drink a Toast to Innocence. The lineup Curry has assembled is impressive, featuring the likes of Bleu, Mike Viola, Willie Wisely, David Myhr, Michael Carpenter, Linus of Hollywood, Seth Swirsky and so many more of my (and your) favorite artists.

As with most covers compilations, Toast features the usual mix of faithful re-creations and bold re-imaginings. To what degree you prefer either is always affected by the level of your fondness for the original and the covering artist, but there are plenty of each to choose from here. To me, however, my favorite covers have fallen into a third category: covers that sound like they could have originals by the covering artist. In other words, they make the cover their own. The two here that stand out in that regard are Greg Pope's cover of Poco's "Crazy Love" and Lannie Flowers' version of the Orleans staple "Dance With Me". In Pope's case, it's a great match of cover and artist; by taking the original and speeding it up just a microsopic bit it sounds like one of his typical slightly off-kilter pop gems, while Flowers turns "Dance With Me" into one of his usual rollicking (and rocking) power pop numbers by adding a honky-tonk piano to the mix in contrast to the highly laid-back original.

In the re-imagining department, there are several standouts. The Davenports turn Randy Van Warmer's borderline treacly "Just When I Needed You Most" into a driving power pop track, Lisa Mychols speeds up the David Soul (of Starsky & Hutch fame) ballad "Don't Give Up on Us" and gives it the full-band treatment, while Willie Wisely takes the sexual subtext of The Atlanta Rhythm Section's "So Into You" and makes it the text, complete with moaning female vocals in the outro. Also rocking things up a bit is Vegas With Randolph and their version of Little River Band's "Cool Change". Plus I give them credit for keeping a straight face while singing lines like "The albatross and the whales/they are my brother".

As for the faithful covers, there are plenty to choose from here. Kyle Vincent, whose style is pretty much 70's lite rock and would be a natural to cover any of the songs featured here, is perfect on Ambrosia's "How Much I Feel"; ex-Merrymaker David Myhr captures the spirit of 10cc with "The Things We Do for Love", and the two halves of The Red Button play to their strengths - Mike Rukeberg with the power poppy "Believe it or Not" (theme from "The Greatest American Hero") and Seth Swirsky's eerily channels Henry Gross almost note-for-note on "Shannon", the ultimate tear-jerking dead dog song. Boston buddies Bleu and Mike Viola take on "Baby Come Back" and "Steal Away", each of which sound exactly you'd hear them in your head singing these tracks, but I'll give Viola kudos for starting to sing "What a Fool Believes" at the end of "Steal Away", since the latter was pretty much a rip-off of the former.

Ironically there's no cover here of "Same Old Lang Syne", the Dan Fogelberg lite rock classic from which the title of the compilation derives. Curry has said it was on the list of songs submitted to the artists to cover, but nobody took it up. Hmmm...sounds like an opening for a Volume 2. The lack of Fogelberg notwithstanding, this is without doubt the best covers compilation since Not Lame's Right to Chews from 2002, which had power poppers covering early 70s' bubblegum classics, and it deserves to be highlighted outside the immediate power pop community.

CD Baby | iTunes | Bandcamp

Monday Roundup.

A few discs to start off the work week:

Various Artists-Thank You Friends: An Almost There Records Tribute to Big Star. Typing that title is going to take me as long as it does to type the review. Unwieldy moniker aside, this is a quality tribute disc and a great way to get into Big Star's music if you haven't already. There are some artists on here that some of you may be familiar with: Joe, Marc's Brother is a natural for "You Get What You Deserve"; Grand Champeen, whose Dial T for This was a fine recent release, captures the melancholy of "Daisy Glaze" perfectly; and Moonlight Towers (whose Like You Were Never There from 2005 is a must-have) gets the honor of covering "September Gurls", one of the greatest power pop songs of all time in this reviewer's humble opinion. CD Baby

Standing Waves-Light Fuse. Lay on Ground. Run Away. The title is always good advice, especially after you've done the first thing. No need to run away from this disc, however, as this Minnesota band has offered up a first-rate collection of pop/rock that in the spirit of today's roundup has a bit of a Big Star/Teenage Fanclub influence. Highlights here include the melancholy "Astronomy", the Third/Sister Lovers-influenced "Aftercrash (5 sec)", and the near-funk of "Rocky's Butcher Shop", which wouldn't have sounded out of place on one of Alex Chilton's adventurous solo discs. Also a standout is "Einstein's Marriage", a Michael Penn-ish delight. My advice: Buy Disc. Place in CD Player. Listen.
CD Baby | MySpace

The Fools-10. This is the tenth release for this Boston band (hence the title), and somehow I managed to miss out on the first nine. I'll have my ears out for #11, though, as 10 is a winner (if not a 10 itself) - it's excellent power pop in the vein of bands like Coronet Blue, The Nines and Third of Never. The driving "Time Will Not Erase Us" works as both a defiant stand by a veteran band and an anthemic rocker that even quotes Tom Petty's "The Waiting". "No Free Love" is a fine midtempo tune, and "Time Goes Slipping By" reminds me a bit of The Meadows. A nice find of a band that's been under the radar all these years.
CD Baby | MySpace