Matthew Sweet Talks Business

10/15/08 4:43pm

by James Tennant (CHARTattack)

Matthew Sweet just put out his 10th album, Sunshine Lies, so ChartAttack felt the time was right to speak with the highly regarded power-popper. Here's what he had to say:

ChartAttack: You've been busy.
Matthew Sweet: I have been very busy. This is a really busy time for me, but it's happy time because I love just making my record how I wanted it. It's just exciting that it has come out and some people still care. We had a good first week, so it bodes well that I might make another one.

That last time we talked, you seemed pensive about the state of the music business in general. You were on Zomba then [in 1999].
Yeah, that was when things started to get weird. They only wanted to do huge things that were huge money, and that made it really weird for artists like me. We did OK with In Reverse, and we got lots of offers to be on TV.

We got asked back on a second single to do Conan O'Brien in New York, and they wouldn't pay for us to fly there. Nobody wanted to go out on a limb, and the feeling was getting more pressured.

Doing a lot of extra-curricular stuff in the early 2000s helped me put off figuring out how I was going to survive. Little things just kind of kept helping me get along. Really, now I feel like the business has changed so much that it's almost not a factor. We just sort of have to find a new model.

That was all around the time of In Reverse.
It was starting around then, and at that time, everybody who did interviews talked about it. At the time, we thought the business was about to totally change. It has changed a lot, but it's not as fast as we envisioned. It's still going in the same direction — fewer and fewer records sell, and it's harder and harder to kind of connect with an audience. Someone like me, who comes from before the internet, is kind of lucky. There's this sort of "lore" that goes back pre-total celebrity era.

And it's funny because an artist like you carries fans from one era into the next, and they'll probably buy the record no matter what.
Yeah. It's not that many people, but I feel if I do my part and I actually do something really good, that it will spread a little bit off those people. It doesn't have to be a huge amount for us to do it with the model we're using at Shout! Factory. It seems better now for an artist like me than it did then. I think artists like me are more likely to do good work now. They've either given up or they're still making music, you know what I mean?

I've heard you say that you haven't felt as free to make the music as you did with Sunshine Lies.
I think that's really true. I did some good sort of "personal" work over the last few years, where I had to go and work with other people. It was good for me personally, but also to just diversify any way I could. I could make sure that my thing at home — making my own albums — was kind of protected and I could do it for free. I've had a lot of time to become a little more well-rounded person and understand my middle age a little better.

At the same time, I've got this set-up here like a little artists' colony, and I've been able to keep busy. That really helped me do a record where I just went "Bang!" and tried to get some energy into it. Even though it's taken me a long time to put it out, everything was real "early take" and energetic.

Was part of that having the old crew back? Guys like Richard Lloyd?
Partly, but even more so I think it was that I'd just come off doing The Thorns. We spent a lot of time doing that. It was very poised, acoustic and harmony singing.

After that, I really just wanted to make loud noise and scream or something. I started the record really with a bunch of stuff that was very rock. It turned out I was just lucky. Richard was out here with Television and so I was able to get him to stay a few days, and when [Ivan] Julian came through with the Misfits, doing this kind of "kings of New York rock" tour, he was able to come over and do a bunch of stuff. That stuff did set the original pace for the record.

So how different does it feel, then, the way you work in 2008?
It's really, really different — but in a way, it's not. We still have to sell records. You think it's all changed, but out of my first week sales, I want to say 30 per cent were downloads and then the rest were CD. Actually, five percent was vinyl. I'm really excited about vinyl for my records because not only is it super-cool looking, but it comes with a CD anyway so there's kind of no reason not to buy it. Well, I guess it's probably more expensive. I'm saying there's no reason to get the album, because I get it free [laughs].

But you know, it's still the same in that the people helping me at Shout! are a general manager and marketing head and press people and radio people. The big difference is our model is vastly tinier, and they're smart enough. They started trying to do this two or three years ago. It worked with my record with Susanna [Hoffs]. They picked up our option because we sold enough records [that] we made our money back, you know? That's the model.

At big labels, it's just not like that. They spend a bunch of money in hopes that it's a homerun, and then the person is finished if it's not. I really do feel like I have a label — it's just a new kind of lean, team type of label and the people are doing it because they love music.