***1/2 Matthew Sweet

IN REVERSE

(Volcano)

Although Sweet claims the title of his seventh album refers to both the Beatlesque backwards instrumentation that peppers it and his wistful desire to reach back to more innocent days, it also alludes to the songwriter's dramatic musical about-face. Two years after releasing the lackluster, mostly self-made Blue Sky on Mars, Sweet has returned to his old habit of tapping talented collaborators to help make his pop classicist's dreams come true.

The result? His best album since '93's Altered Beast and perhaps his most ambitious undertaking ever (the disc's closing track, "Thunderstorm," is a four-part love-as-nature suite that evokes Abbey Road, "Good Vibrations," and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"). Working with a cast of more than a dozen history-steeped session pros (among them guitarist Greg Leisz and Pet Sounds bassist Carol Kaye) and old friends (Velvet Crush's Paul Chastain and Ric Menck, Girlfriend producer Fred Maher), Sweet has orchestrated a wonderwall of sound that does more than just pay hipster lip service to its influences. Like Brian Wilson, he's often cast his lyrically somber songs about emotional desolation in the service of a hopelessly catchy chorus and sun-splashed melody. For that reason, the ornate tack piano and sleigh-bell trappings of the buoyant but confessional "If Time Permits" and "I Should Never Have Let You Know" make perfect sense. Despair rarely sounds this sweet.

-- Jonathan Perry

(Matthew Sweet plays the Paradise this Monday, November 1. Call 423-NEXT.)