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Sweet’s and Hoffs’ vocals are like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that taste great together, and their choice of material here is impeccable.
Matthew Sweet is obsessed with harmony. For a decade of his solo career, he painstakingly multitracked his own voice into towering walls of backing vocals, but in recent years he has discovered the joy of working with other artists whose singing compliment his own sugary voice. The experiment began with the Thorns, the folk-rock trio he formed with fellow singer/songwriters Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins in 2003, and continues with this duet CD featuring Sweet and former Bangle Susanna Hoffs, who first worked with Sweet in Mike Myers’ faux backing band Ming Tea in the Austin Powers movies. Just as those movies were a throwback to the feel-good, free love ’60s, Under the Covers also pays tribute to that decade through a smattering of some of the juiciest pop morsels that hippie-dom has to offer.
Under the Covers begins as any good Sweet record does, with the majestic squealing of longtime collaborator and ex-Television guitarist Richard Lloyd on “I See the Rain,” an obscure single from the Marmalade. Sid ’n’ Susie, as Sweet and Hoffs refer to each other, are joined by a bevy of collaborators who date back to Sweet’s seminal LP Girlfriend, including guitarists Lloyd and Ivan Julian, multi-instrumentalist Greg Leisz, and drummer Ric Menck, plus Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson’s frequent writing partner, whose organ and string arrangements give these songs the same sheen they gave Sweet’s last solo album, Living Things.
Sweet’s and Hoffs’ vocals are like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that taste great together, and their choice of material here is impeccable. No Beatles song could have better suited this pair than “And Your Bird Can Sing,” no torch song would seem more perfect for Hoffs than the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning,” no single song could seem a more obvious choice for a duet than the Mamas & the Papas classic “Monday, Monday”—and, of course, all of these make an appearance. Some of the left-field choices also work out wonderfully, like the little-known “She May Call You Up Tonight” by the Left Banke, the song that initially kicked off this project. There are plenty of other highlights, including Sweet’s pop-ified take on Bob Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” or the Spanish guitar–drenched version of Love’s “Alone Again Or.” The Beach Boys’ classic “The Warmth of the Sun”—one of dozens of Wilson tunes this duo could have knocked out of the park—overflows with Sweet’s delicate falsetto, but the big shocker is the obscure single “Different Drum” by Linda Ronstadt’s old band the Stone Poneys, where Hoffs’ brassy vocals are impossible to ignore.
This album is, quite simply, a blast, and every bit as fun to listen to as it obviously was to record. It does, however, seem a bit pointless. While the songs are all well played, they are by definition inferior to the original versions, and the arrangements waver so little from their forerunners that there seems little reason to listen to these versions when the stunning originals are still out there. And as with the Thorns, whenever Sweet tries to kick up the power on the more rocking numbers (the Who classic “The Kids Are Alright,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” and “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”), the results are strangely lifeless compared with the jaunty power-pop Sweet is capable of. Diehard Sweet or Hoffs fans are going to want to hear this CD for their great voices on these great songs, but other listeners might be better suited by tracking down the originals.
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