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: With the music business in shambles, music somehow remains a very powerful, if invisible, force of nature. Free and natural, I bet there is a lot of great stuff happening right now. Music always seemed like magic to me—where does it come from? As the world opens up with the Internet, more music than ever before is being made, and more than ever before is being listened to. But I do think the days of everyone listening to the same five artists jammed on the radio are soon to be over!
