Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs – Under the Covers Vol. 2

Is it possible to love a pop song just a little too much? In the case of Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (or Sid ‘n’ Susie, as they insist on calling themselves), I’d say the answer is a clear “yes.” When the two first collaborated on Under the Covers, an album of cover songs from the 1960s, it was clearly a project born not out of vanity or artistic restlessness so much as a simple, unashamed love for the material, a sort of hear-over-heels affection for the music itself that they take with them into the next decade and the second Under the Covers album. And it’s that very love that is both the album’s single saving grace and its one major problem.

Of course, no one blames them for loving these songs; these are, after all, some of the greatest songs ever composed. If anything, Volume 2 – which pulls its material from the ’70s — is even heavier on hits than its ’60s-flavored antecedent, eschewing the handful of relative obscurities that gave that album a bit of depth in favor of a long list of massive hits by the likes of Yes, the Raspberries, the Grateful Dead, John Lennon, and Fleetwood Mac. There are also, by the way, two songs from Todd Rundgren, and those prove to be the aesthetic key to the whole album, which borrows its homespun, easygoing vibe from some of Rundgren’s own albums.

As with Volume 1, this is basically one giant love-in, with Sweet and Hoffs offering affectionate and entirely reverent takes on songs that mean something to them. And that really is the only common thread running through these songs — well, that and the fact that they all date back to the ’70s. Aside from that, there’s no real rhyme or reason to following Lennon’s acerbic diatribe “Gimme Some Truth” with the relatively breezy “Maggie May,” nor do AM radio hits like “Second Hand News” have much to do with Big Star’s power pop. This is simply a jukebox of 70s radio hits. Nothing more, nothing less.

There’s no doubting the sincerity of the artists’ adoration of this material. Their energetic harmonizing turns every track into a sing-along, and their enthusiasm never wanes, but while that makes the record pleasant and impossible to dislike, it also makes it totally unsurprising, even pointless. After all, why do we need a new take on “All the Young Dudes” that sounds essentially like a karaoke version, with the guitar tone sounding identical to Mott the Hoople’s and only the vocals seeming different? They occasionally try to spice things up a bit, as with the gender-swapping of “Maggie May” (sung by Hoffs), but even there, it sounds for all the world like Rod Stewart’s original, right down to the finger-picked intro. They even recruit Lindsey Buckingham himself to join them on “Second Hand News,” a clear indication that this album is more about reverence than interpretation, more about creating a living pop music museum than exploring these songs in any meaningful way.

As with the first Under the Covers album, then, this volume is never anything less than fun—since the artists take no risks, how could they possibly mess up these stellar songs?—and yet, personally, I’d be just as happy burning a mix CD of all the original incarnations of these tracks. That leaves the Under the Covers series in a very odd place: Given the obvious enthusiasm on display, I can understand why they made these albums, but I’m not entirely sure to whom they’re meant to appeal.

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