Some songs always play slower than you remember them. Sometimes this is a good thing. I am not the biggest Matthew Sweet fan, and as an album I prefer 100% Fun. But this, the fifth song from Altered Beast, makes me swoon every time.
If you know his voice at all, you know it can be described as “reedy.” Here the reed bends until it shivers:
So hold me and love me
Tie me up and drug me
‘Cause I’m not gonna beg you for my life
When that high and boyish voice sings of such weariness, the clarity of the rejection is all the more crystal. It’s a version of surrender so resolute it’s almost funny. Only what kills me about it is how the refrain keeps the song’s subject vague. There is a “you,” but since “you” might not equal “the one,” the refrain just says how he wants “someone” to pull the trigger.
This uncertainty is summed up at the end of each chorus; a note of hesitation in the voice of the jumper:
If you’re what I think you’ll be
If you’re who I think I see
Shoot
The last word is repeated and stretched as the music fades, an oscillation to match how we submit and retract conditions when loving, when being loved. If x is met, then y is okay. If y is met, etc. The dream is that the conditions are all met seamlessly and simultaneously, so that the bullet strikes only after you’re totally convinced and ready to go. But who ever is? Who could ever imagine what such a state would be like? Sound like?
