For his second Irish gig in the last year, Matthew Sweet is clearly very comfortable and confident with Irish audiences – and why wouldn’t he be? They’ve been romancing each other for years.
Sweet’s is a sound that is very much of its time, that time being when American sitcoms first began using irony – a concoction of great big riffs and three-part harmonies. Important as it was in the ’90s, neither Sweet nor The Velvet Crush have really moved away from that sound.
The first remarkable thing about the venue is the weird crowd. It’s the trademark of an artist whose fans follow him fervently and grow up with him; well, grow older maybe. Lots of male mutton-dressed-as-lambs and ageing indie blokes gathered to witness with patient reverence the power-pop pro revisiting the tunes that mean so much to so few. In that respect it’s preferential that Sweet not change his sound at the risk of tampering with these people’s memories.
While the crowd hung on his every word and gave each song the loving attention it deserved, Sweet returned the favour with plenty of classic tunes, like those from his obscure Japanese record. Certainly Sweet’s remarks about losing his glasses and his relationship with The Velvet Crush boys were friendly and natural enough to establish a real rapport with the crowd.
There was little for the uninitiated tourist to grasp, but the starry-eyed nostalgia of the overgrown boys queuing for autographs was certainly testament to a job well done.