Reeling In The ’70s: Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs Turn Back the Clock on Under the Covers Vol. 2
For alt-pop icons Matthew Sweet
and Susanna Hoffs, who have been collaborating
on and off for over a decade,
the motivating factor was simple: allow
the spirit of the song to lead the way.
“I was never that into doing covers,”
Sweet confides, “because I think
people have a tendency to ‘make it
their own,’ and I often find they just
end up with a weird version of the
original. From my experience, when
you can create an exciting landscape
to be in, that’s what makes it more
faithful to the original.”
In the case of Under the Covers Vol.
2 [Shout! Factory], the landscape is the
1970s—a logical step beyond the ’60s
bent of Vol. 1, and a time when pop
music was a many-splintered thing that
hugged the blues-rock swagger of
mavericks like Rod Stewart and Derek
and the Dominos in the same embrace
as the earthy psychedelia of Todd
Rundgren and the pastoral Brit progfolk
of Yes. Tracked largely at
Sweet’s Lolina Green Studio, nestled in
the back of his secluded home in the
Hollywood Hills, the album’s 16 songs
capture a mood and sound of the era.
“We realized in learning these songs
that they were very spontaneous,”
Hoffs explains, “so they had to be
recorded in a spontaneous way
because obviously they didn’t have
endless tracks and endless amounts of
choices back then. And there are a lot
of imperfections on those records—or I
should say those records are perfect in
their imperfections. It was all about the
feel. It wasn’t about a perfectly in-time
drum track or a perfect vocal. They’re
about emotion and feel and the spirit
of the song.”
Of course, it helps when you have
Lindsey Buckingham (on Fleetwood
Mac’s “Second Hand News”), Steve
Howe (on Yes’ “I’ve Seen All Good
People”) and Dhani Harrison (son of
George and a standout on “Beware
of Darkness”) along for the mission.
They were eager to contribute when
they understood how reverently
Sweet and Hoffs had kept to each
song’s intent.
“We tried to learn the main parts
pretty much as they are, but like Sue
says, it would drive you out of your
mind to make it perfect, because
records back then were real,” says
multi-instrumentalist/singer Sweet,
who played a Fano electric guitar
through 65amps 65-London and
Swart amps, and enlisted help from
longtime collaborators Ric Menck
(drums) and Greg Leisz (guitars).
“There was a looseness to [music
from that era] that there isn’t now,
so to try to capture that exactly
would be too hard. The way we do it
is by not playing with clicks and
not doing modern stuff—just playing
it like it would have been
played then.”
With one notable exception—Sweet
doesn’t record to tape. He’s a Pro Tools
veteran, having first used the program in
the mixing phase of his 1991 power-pop
breakthrough, Girlfriend. These days he
records and mixes entirely inside the
box with a Pro Tools HD 8 setup outfitted
with two Accel cards, Digidesign’s 192
I/O, and a C|24 console.
So how does he conjure the thickly
compressed guitars of The Raspberries’
“Go All the Way,” the distant piano
echoes of Todd Rundgren’s “Hello It’s
Me” or the full-blanket spread of the
drum kit on Big Star’s “Back of A Car”?
Besides an array of microphones and
preamps that lean vintage—including
AEA stereo ribbon and Telefunken Ela M
mics, and Universal Audio’s 2-610 and
TAB Funkenwerk’s V78M preamps—
Sweet relies on McDSP plug-ins and
Audio Ease Altiverb’s Bill Putnam Echo
Chambers (chambers 2, 4, and 5 at
Cello Studios in L.A.) so he can paint
with an analog brush in the digital realm.
“When McDSP’s Retro Pack came
out last fall,” Sweet recalls, “it sounded
so good that I had to go back and
replace almost everything, even
though we were already mixing. For
the last few years I’ve been using the
AEA ribbon mic for the drum
overhead, and when you run that
through the [4040] Retro Limiter, it
really squashes the cymbals, very
much like what the Beatles got at
Abbey Road.”
For anyone used to the signature
Stevie Nicks-like clarity of Hoffs’ vocal
work with The Bangles over the years,
there are some pleasant surprises. She
nails the Rod Stewart rasp on “Maggie
May,” and takes Jon Anderson’s complex
melodies to task on “I’ve Seen All
Good People.” With Sweet’s help, Hoffs
recently installed a sister Pro Tools studio
in her own house, where she voiced
most of the album’s background vocals
(as well as the lead for Little Feat’s
“Willin’”) on an Ela M 251. The two
traded sessions online via Pando when
they weren’t working together at
Lolina Green.
“One revelation about working
with Matthew is that he’s broken
down all these rituals I had about overanalyzing
and over-perfecting,” Hoffs
says. “Sometimes when you first try a
song, you think you can perform it better
the second time, but there’s something
magical about that first take. You
don’t always need to clean it up and
make it perfect, because the emotion
is already there. That has a lot to do
with why these songs will always have
a place in my heart.”