Matthew Sweet is one of those artists who has been blessed and cursed by releasing a legendary album early in his career. After two '80s records made nary a blip on the critical and commercial fronts, his 1991 record Girlfriend became an instant classic, an irrefutable argument for the enduring power of guitar pop. Three chords, achingly gorgeous melodies, and a way with words-- a simple formula, but absolutely enduring.

Since Girlfriend, Sweet has continued to regularly release good to great guitar-pop records, all of them featuring his trademark mix of emotionally honest songwriting and pure pop sounds. You can call it a "rut," if you want, and maybe you'd be right-- this is not a guy who's on the bleeding edge of the latest blips and bloops emanating from whatever underground noise movement is dominating late-night college radio. He's a singer-songwriter in the traditional mold, and his records have always reflected that.

So maybe it's that radio and pop music moved beyond his style, rather than anything he's been doing wrong, since it's been a while between hits for Sweet — not just on the charts and the dial, but amongst the critical community as well. I'm a die-hard fan, so a new Matthew Sweet record is always an excuse to rush to the record store, but the best he can usually manage is a dismissive pellet review in the back of Entertainment Weekly.

Or, maybe the critics are right, and Sweet's past his performing prime, regurgitating stale musical ideas that are more an homage to a tribute to a classic sound than anything else-- an echo of an echo.

Sweet's latest record, Sunshine Lies, provides a mostly convincing argument that there's not much wrong with Sweet's sound, or his style, or his straight-ahead approach to writing and recording and performing. It's exactly what you'd expect, and at the same time, nothing to be taken for granted.

Everything that's great about Matthew Sweet's music is there on Sunshine Lies, perhaps most notably on a near-perfect unsettling ballad named "Feel Fear." This is the Matthew Sweet we all know and love, the one who can blurt out brilliant melodies at will and bring together beauty and unease, confusion and clarity, without missing a beat.

"Feel Fear" comes into focus around a simple, shifting piano riff, and Sweet unspools a melody line across the verses and chorus that never quite ends, even when it seems to resolve. Or maybe it's that the piano riff is never far behind the resolution, and that even when the band congeals, the pieces always seem distant from one another. It's beautiful, but unsettling, like a shimmering mirage of peace and justice that slips out of view when you stare too long.