Remember Matthew Sweet? Apparently most of us didn’t, judging by the sparse crowd at his Fox Theatre show on Monday night. Photos by .
I stumbled across when I was 13, through the compilation, a charity album put together by the Red Hot Organization to benefit AIDS research and causes. He opened the album with “Superdeformed,” a fairly dark track for the normally sunny Sweet, but it was enough to peak my interest. I picked up “100% Fun” and was a fairly dedicated Matthew Sweet fan.
I hadn’t thought of him much in the last few years, but jumped at the chance to see Sweet on Monday night at the in Boulder. I expected the crowd to be a bit older than me and pretty mellow, but I didn’t expect a nearly empty venue. I also didn’t expect Matthew Sweet to be unrecognizable when he came to the stage.
He opened with “Flying,” off of his latest release, “Sunshine Lies,” and it was apparent that his appearance wasn’t the only thing that hadn’t weathered the ’90s very well. His voice teetered toward off-key, and Sweet was virtually silent between the first few songs, not even acknowledging the audience’s presence until midway through the set.
The first half of the show was mostly devoted to new tracks, but Sweet did do some justice to “Sick of Myself,” “Someone to Pull the Trigger” and “Daisy Chain” later on in the short evening. He ended with “Girlfriend,” which seemed to start too quickly, sputter half way through and come to a screeching halt as Sweet placed his guitar on the ground and left it to die in a mess of feedback.
Sweet and his lively band returned moments later for a mildly improved encore with “Divine Intervention” and “You Don’t Love Me.” These songs were the gems of an otherwise dull, bordering-on-depressing evening. Though Sweetap presence was lackluster and awkward, at least the dude standing directly in front of the stage throwing metal fingers in the air was entertaining.
Seriously though, metal fingers? I wonder if that guy knew that he was in Boulder. At a Matthew Sweet show.
is a Denver writer and regular Reverb contributor. Check out her and .
Matt Schild is editor of and a regular Reverb contributor.
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