Matthew Sweet and Susana Hoffs: Unrefined, unrehearsed, unabashedly fun.

“We’ve only played some of these songs together … less than once,” admitted a sheepish Susannah Hoffs midway through an amiably low-key World Cafe Live set with Matthew Sweet last night.

It kinda showed. There were way more flubs and false starts than you’d expect from a pair of pedigreed power-pop pros playing a bunch of songs they’ve ostensibly loved for their entire lives — but then it’s not like anybody was complaining. The set wasn’t far from a glorified sing-along: a trio of semi-obscure has-beens (Hoffs and Sweet, a.k.a. Sid ‘n’ Susie, with additional guitarist Paul Chastain joining them for good measure) on stage with three acoustic guitars and a couple bottles of wine, bantering their way through a bunch of under-rehearsed renditions of other people’s songs.

But it was amateurish in the best possible way. The duo’s love for this material – mostly familiar tunes plucked from their two albums of classic pop/rock covers (2006’s Under The Covers, Vol. 1: The Sixties and a just-released follow-up from the ’70s) — was infectious. It didn’t hurt that Hoffs, at an amazingly well-preserved 50-years-old, looks (and sounds) just as stunning as she did in her heyday as the Bangles’ head heartthrob. She only grew more endearing the more girlishly flustered she became (she seemed to be holding up a lyric sheet about half the time, which she insisted vehemently was because of her stage fright, and not because she didn’t know the songs.) Or that Sweet’s adoring cult of fans (count me in) was clearly well represented in the audience. This was clearly a crowd of power-pop geeks — there were half-joking shouted requests not just for Sweet and Bangles “covers” but also for songs by Chastain’s all-but-forgotten ’90s band Velvet Crush.

The lengthy encore portion of the show began with a Q&A session (i.e. more banter) on topics including Howard Stern, a forthcoming Bangles record currently being recorded at Sweet’s house, Sweet’s penchant for Vibram FiveFingers shoes and the possibility of an ’80s installment (The Dbs, Let’s Active, and Marshall Crenshaw were all mentioned as potential inclusions.) They finished up with a quick sweep back through the ’70s (an obscure number from the soundtrack to Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) and ’60s (the better-known but very welcome “To Sir With Love,” which made me wish they’d seen fit to include some more soul-inflected material on the albums; Hoffs certainly has the pipes for it) before closing the show in the ’80s and ’90s with a Bangles medley and a nugget from Girlfriend, Sweet’s 1991 masterpiece. They satisfied the fans by finally turning to their own material, perhaps offering a de facto preview of volumes 3 and 4, and also reminding us that they’ve got more than a few classics under their own belts.

Set List

I’ve Seen All Good People/Your Move (Yes)
Willin’ (Little Feat)
Second Hand News (Fleetwood Mac)
You’re So Vain (Carly Simon)
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding (Elvis Costello)
Cinnamon Girl (Neil Young)
Different Drum (Stone Poneys)
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young)
She May Call You Up (The Left Banke)
Hello It’s Me (Todd Rundgren)
Couldn’t I Just Tell You (Todd Rundgren)
All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople)
And Your Bird Can Sing (The Beatles)
Baby Blue (Badfinger)
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (Bob Dylan)
Maggie May (Rod Stewart)
Back Of A Car (Big Star)

Encore

In The Long Run (The Carrie Nations)
To Sir With Love (Lulu)
In Your Room/Manic Monday (The Bangles)
I’ve Been Waiting (Matthew Sweet)

Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs @ World Cafe Live, September 9

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Music, Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.