For those who were a tad disappointed with the follow-up albums to Matthew Sweet’s masterpiece Girlfriend — there have been a few songs here and there, but not much, though the epic In Reverse album comes close — Sweet’s latest release, Kimi Ga Suki * Raifu finds him near the top of his form. This album — a love letter of sorts to his Japanese fans — reunites the Girlfriend players on some tracks; the fact that the album was recorded in something like three days gives it a glowing, hot immediacy that his more recent output (particularly the collaborative Thorns album) lacks.

“The Ocean in Between” was one of my favorite songs of 2003; like almost all of Girlfriend — and most of the tracks on the latest album — the song is nearly perfect pop.

(I would have uploaded this last year, but there was some odd copyright stuff with the Japanese import CD I had, making it impossible to play in a computer.)

Hear it. (3.85 mb)

(Does anyone download this stuff, by the way?)

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