Album made Ariz. feel like home

I’m thankful, then and forever forward, for Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend.”

You never know when gratitude is going to hit.

But you know it when it does. Anything can spur it. A song you haven’t heard in a long time plays on the radio. Rummaging through a closet turns up an unexpected reminder.

Or a random headline takes you back to something that changed your whole perspective on place and identity even if you didn’t know it at the time.

And for that, you can feel thankful. For me, it was seeing a random headline zip by on one of the scores of newsletters that clog my email inbox. (Like Bart Simpson, I can’t help but feel partially responsible.)

Matthew Sweet’s seminal album “Girlfriend” was turning 30.

'Girlfriend' was a godsend upon its release 30 years ago

OK, the original response was not gratitude. It was horror at the realization that if one of my favorite albums is 30 years old, I’m 30 years older than the first time I heard it.

So I listened to it again and realized a couple of things. One: Power pop ages nicely. And two: This was the album that made Arizona feel like home when I listened to it three decades ago.

In 1991, I was working as the city hall reporter for The Arizona Republic, living in a Tempe apartment. This was preferable to my previous beat as a night-cop reporter and the awful hours the job required — 3 p.m. till midnight, Tuesday through Saturday. Which was preferable to my beat before that, living in Kingman where I was the sole reporter in The Republic’s Western bureau.

But I learned a lot in Kingman. Like how to be alone. I grew up in Virginia, the youngest in a large family who always had a lot of friends, something that continued when I moved to North Carolina for work. My girlfriend stayed in North Carolina as we navigated a long-distance relationship. So this was a big change. Movies, books and albums helped. But it still could be lonely.

Changing Hands, Zia Records and Long Wong's were favorite haunts

After moving to the Valley I spent a lot of my off-hours and most of my money at two places: Changing Hands Bookstore and Zia Records. Oh, also a third: Long Wong’s, for beer, wings and live music, not in that order.

Anything new by a writer or musician I liked was a big deal.

Thanks to the encyclopedic knowledge and record collections of my friends Jon and Ed in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where I got my first newspaper job, I had heard Matthew Sweet’s first two albums, which most people didn’t know existed. Ed became the long-serving and esteemed music critic in Winston-Salem. Jon now works at the LA Times. They introduced me to more music in five years than I’ve heard ever since.

Those first albums, “Inside” and “Earth,” were glossy and over-produced, but with great pop hooks and some fantastic guest artists (Bernie Worrell, Chris Stamey, Aimee Mann, Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd). But they were flat. I liked them enough to bring along to Kingman, though, and to invest in whatever Sweet came out with next.

After a year in Kingman, I took that knowledge and those albums to Tempe. I knew “Girlfriend” was coming on Oct. 22, so I hustled over to Zia’s old location off Mill Avenue when I had a day off and bought it. Something to look forward to, but not expecting a whole lot. So I got home, put the CD on in my boxy secondhand Sony player and walked to the kitchen to make dinner. Perhaps canned chili mixed with mac and cheese? Bon appetit.

From the opening chord of “Divine Intervention,” the first song, I was floored.

Stunned.

I forgot about dinner, got a beer, sat down and listened to it all the way through. I called my girlfriend — only fitting, given the album's title (and even though it's a breakup album at heart). Then I called friends, most of whom will still vouch that I made them listen to the record about 10,000 times. I listened to it again as I finally made dinner — and several more times that night.

There was a loneliness in Sweet’s voice and some of the melodies. When one of the best songs on the record is called “You Don’t Love Me” it’s hard to escape that feeling. The crunchy straightforward production accentuated it. Lloyd and Quine’s stinging guitars brought Sweet's immaculate pop instincts to life in a new way.

But that wasn’t it, not entirely.

Really hearing this record for the first time helped put Arizona in context

I’d lived in Tempe for about six months and had been spending time looking back, to the life I had before. Because of how I’d heard Sweet through my friends in North Carolina, there was a connection to the past.

But this record — just that opening chord — was the first time I really felt like I was here, this was home, this is something I discovered here and I am going to remember.

And I do. It’s still great and the opening chord still grabs me.

Standing in the living room of a tiny Tempe apartment is kind of a weird place to have a eureka moment. But this album meant looking forward, figuring out a life here. It was new and fresh and unexpected.

So was everything else.

I’m thankful, then and forever forward, for Matthew Sweet’s “Girlfriend,” for the opening chord of “Divine Intervention,” for a sketchy CD player (but good speakers) and Zia stocking a record. I knew I wanted it. I didn't know I needed it.

The album was a huge leap forward for Sweet. It was for me, too. The girlfriend I called then is now my wife. But the soundtrack to the start of the rest of my life, a belated but essential welcome to Arizona, even though Arizona has nothing to do with the record.