"Thunderstorm" Matthew Sweet

In celebration of the new webhosting limitations (or rather, lack thereof), I wanted to finally post a song I've been unable to before now. This track, clocking in at a whopping nine minutes, thirty-seven seconds, is simply epic. It's a mini rock opera complete with several movements and a great slowdown to acoustic strumming. I first heard "Thunderstorm" on CD101, and yes, they played the whole thing, none of that editted for radio bullshit. The didn't play it often, but when they did, it was amazing. It's rather impressive for a song to be so good and so complete that the programming director of a major radio station in a pretty large city knows that he can't cut anything from it.

The song begins with the telltale rumbling of far off thunder. When the drums kick in, it's as if mother nature were being channelled. The flawless orchestration of the instruments in this track is instantly apparent and the musicianship of Matthew Sweet is audible in every cymbal crash and bass strum. Then, just when the powerful, thunderclap of an intro drops down, and it's just an acoustic guitar and Sweet is singing, "Lost my way into you/and I don't know what else to do/but wait for a calm in the storm/hopin' it subsides" it just gives you the chills of the light spray of rain after the crashing thunderhead has passed. The structure of the song is absolutely analogous to the different stages of a storm. After the quiet spray of rain, a slow, mournful wind picks up and the grass is pressed flat in sheets as the wetness glues them all together. The guitars and vocals gradually pick up steam, and you can see the oncoming rain in the distance. It's a grey wall undulating in the wind and drawing a writhing swath of water across the fields. The guitar wails and the keys pound and the wall of water and gale force winds pummel the house and the thunder slams and drums and the windows rattle and then it's passed again, this time for good. The clouds skirt past on their journey elsewhere, carried on by the high winds that brought them. The stars begin to blink into existence behind the storm, pinpricks of hope and optimism after the rain. The slow waltz of Sweet and the french horn is a welcome, calming, respite after the torrent. The final crescendo is something exhaltant, rather than the oppressive weight of the initial blast, this time it's fists in the air instead of hands covering heads.

Matthew Sweet Official Site
Matthew Sweet on WikiPedia
Buy "In Reverse" from Amazon.com

"Thunderstorm" Matthew Sweet

image courtesy of Tips from the Top Floor