Keith Pille's Weekly Shuffle
October 10, 2005

Every week, I will fire up the Shuffle Songs option on my iPod; the first song to come up, no matter what it is, will get an instant, unvarnished review. We're at the mercy of random chance and the limits of my digital music collection. Let's see where this takes us.

I Wanted to Tell You
Matthew Sweet, Girlfriend

Matthew Sweet's a tough one to call. He can be pretty great from time to time; every album's going to have at least one song that's one-for-the-ages awesome. But outside of those nuggets, he's amazing with how consistently OK he is. Not bad, nothing to be ashamed of, but not great-- always just sort of pleasant.

Girlfriend is one of his better albums (I'd rate “Divine Intervention,” “Girlfriend,” and “I've Been Waiting” all as awesome), but “I Wanted to Tell You” is firmly in the blah category. Sweet's voice is, well, sweet, and the backup harmonies are smoothing, but the song fails to evoke any real emotional response.

Middle of the road.

Weekly Shuffle Scoreboard (Best to Worst):

1. "Rock N Roll Radio V2," Derailleur
2.  "Back from Somewhere (live)," Husker Du
3. "Powderfinger," Neil Young
4. "Gassed & Stoked," Lou Reed
5. "Nicotine & Gravy," Beck
6. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (live)," Wilco
7. "John, I'm Only Dancing," David Bowie
8. "Take It or Leave it," The Strokes
9. “I Wanted to Tell You,” Matthew Sweet
10. "Soldier's Joy," Mark O'Connor
11. "Masoko Tanga," The Police
12. "Climbing up the Walls," Radiohead
13. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Mission of Burma