The duo of Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet may be the perfect assimilation of vocal chops and instrumental savvy, as shown on a pair of recent albums titled Under The Covers (Shout! Factory), with volume one re-examining big hits from the ’60s and volume two tackling the ’70s. The track record for Hoffs and Sweet speaks for itself. Hoffs’ band, the Bangles, was the only member of the hallowed Paisley Underground scene to sell more than a handful of records, cracking the national top-30 no fewer than eight times from 1986-89. Sweet’s breakthrough album was 1991’s Girlfriend, which paved the way for later power-pop classics like Altered Beast and 100{e5d2c082e45b5ce38ac2ea5f0bdedb3901cc97dfa4ea5e625fd79a7c2dc9f191} Fun. The pair plans to take an acoustic version of their Under The Covers act on the road in September, but in the meantime is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all this week. Read our Q&A with them.
Matthew Sweet: Clay has helped me understand music better, and music influences my thinking as a potter on clay. I guess I just dig the elemental! (See Cat Fancy‘s June issue for an article about me and cats, real and pottery.) Making pottery here at home requires lots of old-fashioned science tech, which I love. I can barely stand letting a glaze kiln cool, I am so excited to see the results, for better or worse. Throwing on the wheel is very humbling. One day you can throw like a master, and the next day maybe nothing will go right. I never quite know what the object really is, how I actually feel about it, until it’s done. In this way, it is very similar to music for me. Production pottery doesn’t interest me much; I am all about being an “art potter.” No two alike!
