''Catspaw'' is the fifteenth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by American singer-songwriter

Matthew Sweet Sidney Matthew Sweet (born October 6, 1964) is an American alternative rock/power pop singer-songwriter and musician who was part of the burgeoning music scene in Athens, Georgia, during the 1980s before gaining commercial success in the 1990 ...

. It was released on January 15, 2021, through

Omnivore Recordings Omnivore Recordings is an independent record label founded in 2010. It specializes in historical releases, reissues and previously unissued vintage recordings, as well as select releases of new music, on CD, vinyl and digital formats. Omnivore R ...

Background

Recording and instrumentation for the album was completed in 2019, while in Sweet's home studio, prior to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

Velvet Crush Velvet Crush is an American power pop band from Providence, Rhode Island, United States, that achieved prominence in indie-rock circles in the early- and mid-1990s. The band broke up in 1996 but re-formed in 1998 and have continued to record ...

drummer Ric Menck collaborates on majority of the songs through the album.

Release

The first single "Stars Explode" was released on December 12, 2020.

Critical reception

''Catspaw'' was met with "generally favorable" reviews from critics. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, this release received an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 77 based on 5 reviews. Matt Collar of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

said: "Matthew Sweet's 15th studio album and third since moving from Los Angeles to his home state of Nebraska, 2021's Catspaw finds him further digging into his anthemic power pop and tube-amp guitar wizardry. Catspaw is a darker, rawer-sounding album than both of its predecessors, with a more focused and uniform aesthetic. Part of this focus comes from Sweet playing all of the instruments except for drums, which were supplied by his longtime collaborator and Velvet Crush member

Ric Menck Velvet Crush is an American power pop band from Providence, Rhode Island, United States, that achieved prominence in indie-rock circles in the early- and mid-1990s. The band broke up in 1996 but re-formed in 1998 and have continued to record, ...

." Writing for ''

American Songwriter ''American Songwriter'' is a bimonthly magazine covering songwriting. Established in 1984, it features interviews, songwriting tips, news, reviews and lyric contest. The magazine is based in Nashville, Tennessee. History The ''American Songwri ...

'', Hal Horowitz wrote: "Sweet’s insistence on his guitar taking the spotlight starts to wear thin by about the halfway point in these dozen tunes. The songwriting, taken individually, is generally strong and immediately recognizable as Mathew Sweet penned. But the production and approach is so similar on every track that the effect is diluted." Stephen Delusner of '' Uncut'' stated: "For his 15th album, the Omaha ic - Sweet is from Lincolnnative takes over lead, along with every other instrument but drums. Sweet emerges as an ingenious guitar player in his own right, one who has absorbed and tweaked the lessons of his celebrated collaborators."

Track listing

Personnel

– Höfner bass guitar, Novo rhythm and lead guitars, piano, all vocals,

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stat ...

, recording, mixing *

– drums *

Bob Ludwig Robert Carl Ludwig (born December 11, 1944), is a retired American mastering engineer. He mastered recordings on all the major recording formats for all the major record labels, and on projects by more than 1,300 artists, including Led Zeppeli ...

– mastering * Jeff Powell – vinyl mastering * Greg Allen – art direction, design

References

External links

Catspaw
at

* * {{Authority control 2021 albums Matthew Sweet albums Omnivore Recordings albums