Sweet's Beast: A classic from the first listen

It's been years and years since rock music was still important and had great relevance. Artists were not pop bunnies who sang with computer voices, but stars with guitars, poets, explainers of the world.

Today it is time to hear Matthew Sweets "Altered Beast".

After his album "Girlfriend", which appeared in many best lists in 1992, Matthew Sweet from Lincoln, Nebraska was an insider tip, even though he did anything but the grunge that was popular 30 years ago. '94's "Altered Beast" also stuck to not giving in to fashion: the former sideman of Lloyd Cole stuck to his evocation of the enthusiastic, pleading innocence of the sixties, roughened with the dirt of the nineties.

The Byrds or Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would have sounded like Matthew Sweet back then. Thanks to producer Richard Dashut, who was also behind Fleetwood Mac's super-seller "Rumours", Sweet's "Beast" has the sound of a classic from the first listen.

But the studio veteran didn't put Sweet and his companions on a radio pop leash, but rather dared to strike a balance between song discipline and sound desire. From which the guitarists only benefit. Experts like Greg Leisz (K.D. Lang), Richard Lloyd (Television) and Robert Quine (Lou Reed), all invited by Sweet, make full use of the free space without ever endangering Sweet's central position.