In the world of record production, months, even years, can be spent in pursuit of perfection: the perfectly rhythmic snare precisely crashing, or the pristine guitar dispensing its music without a hint of human participation. Voices have to be perfect too–a difficult proposition. So if the voice comes close once, say on a chorus, you can just strip the same recording in each time you need it. Now, there are a lot of reasons production is done that way these days, some pathetic (anal or blindered people with too much money on their hands), some logical (why not get it right if you can?), some almost reasonable (the pressing need to accommodate the growing sophistication of the ears of the pop audience). This is all part of the progress of rock ‘n’ roll, and there’s no point in fueling the fires of carping Luddites or knee-jerk nostalgists.
I’d been entranced by the album for months when I met engineer Rondinelli by chance at a music conference; I’ve spent some time with him on the phone since, talking about the record. When Sweet came through town recently, opening a couple of shows for the Indigo Girls at the Chicago Theatre, I grabbed at the chance to meet him at his hotel and go over the album with him. The conversations allowed me to piece together the making of Girlfriend’s radiant charms.
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After Earth, Sweet got together with Maher, whom he’d met in Cole’s band and who subsequently helped produce certain tracks on Earth. Rondinelli, a former Chicagoan who’d produced Souled American’s first album, had worked with Maher before, notably on Trip Shakespeare’s terrific Across the Universe. For Sweet’s third record, the trio decided to run in the other direction. They wanted to make a pop album, but one that was roughed up and immediate. “The Beatles’ production was so good because everything was done to express their music and their vision,” says Sweet. “And they recorded it cleanly, without digital reverb to fuck it up or everything else that people do to make records have less impact today. I think they had the ideal clean modern recording style. The white album was very much a sonic model for Girlfriend; [Fleetwood Mac’s] Tusk is another.”
At the same time, some other production decisions were made that seemingly contradict this naturalism. For one, Maher and Rondinelli laid the compression on thick. “We used very limited technology in making the record, but we overutilized every bit that we did use,” Rondinelli says dryly. “I think Girlfriend redefined the use of compression in rock.” For another, it was decided that Sweet’s voice would be the only one on the record: this emphasizes Sweet’s pleasant personality, but it also gives Girlfriend an insular feel reminiscent of one-man-band efforts by Todd Rundgren or Prince. Also, the trio cheerfully used the studio for something Rondinelli calls “events”: pieces of backward tapes inserted into the mix, blasts of amp hum, an exaggerated stereo separation on some songs, an instance or two of technological distortion of Sweet’s voice, and more.
Girlfriend’s lead guitarists are Lloyd, once of Television, and Robert Quine, a nasty guitar slinger who started out in the Voidoids and played with Sweet on Lloyd Cole’s two solo albums. Together they make Girlfriend a guitar album on a par with some of Neil Young’s classic work in the 70s. Even a Byrdsian romp like “I’ve Been Waiting,” the album’s new single, is not only based on a rollicking guitar line but is kicked into high gear with yet another singing, personable solo. “Evangeline,” a mysterious but rocking song having something to do with some comic-book characters, has a similarly wound-up riff driving the song; and on “Don’t Go” there seems to be one entire track of nothing but feedback, which at song’s end bursts into yet another piercing Lloyd workout.
“Well,” replied Carson, “because of people like you, Jack. That’s why, you craggy blob of angry sputum.”
Locally, with one interesting exception, columnists Quincied furiously with no apparent need to quote Souljah’s side of the story, or even the context of her remarks. The Sun-Times’s Carl Rowan dopily sided with Clinton in one issue, and then filed one of those columnar cliches where the columnist, in the guise of carrying on a dialogue with readers, lobs himself softball questions that he then knocks out of the park.
