Time doesn't matter much to Matthew Sweet. He's got a lot of gifts as an artist, but one of his most unique is his ability to write timeless songs, tunes that exist outside of the boundaries of month, date and year. His songs are so drenched in influences--great pop inspirations like the Beatles and the Beach Boys--and yet are so uniquely his. At the same time, they could just as easily have come out in 1969 as they could in 1999. They might occasionally be dated by their sound, but the core at each song's heart is universal.

The timelessness of Sweet's music is emphasized to a greater degree than usual on In Reverse, his homage to the great pop sound of decades past. He's taken his style and adapted it to the techniques of such luminaries as Brian Wilson and Phil Spector, placing the music into giant echoing spaces that reverberate with longing. It's his most cohesive effort since Girlfriend and speaks to his status as one of the great underrated American pop artists.

As you would expect from Sweet, the songs are all drenched in regret and desire, the twin poles around which his lyrics usually rotate. Those emotions resonate more deeply within the old- school production style; if he typically writes about loves past, then the past is just a bit more present in these tunes. The feelings bounce around inside the songs just like the bangs of the tympani drums ricochet inside the studio walls.

Sweet rocks out on In Reverse plenty--the album's first single, "What Matters," is an up-tempo number, and "Write Your Own Song" blisters off the CD and scorches its way out your stereo speakers. It's as vicious a pop song about the temptation to make bad pop songs as you'll ever hear. He also lifts the album's tempo midway through with a pair of solid guitar-driven rockers, "Future Shock" and "Split Personality," perhaps just to nudge those awake who usually snooze through the slow ones.

But In Reverse is first and foremost a great ballad record, one of those discs you'll enjoy enough now but really get a lot of use from when you've had your heart broken. There's some vibrant desperation in Sweet's ballads this time around. They really seem to push the boundaries of passion into new places; lyrics like "If it's worse/to live than to let go/you've got to let me know" aren't exactly your standard "Baby, I miss you, come home" fare. Many of the ballads take darker turns, like "Beware My Love," which warns a lover to stay away for fear of emotional attack: "Beware my love/You know you don't deserve to be abused." Yet throughout the darker themes, the music stays as sweet and catchy as usual; there's a genuine longing in the melodies, even if the words warn of bleaker eventualities.

Near the end of In Reverse, Sweet begins to overindulge in his melancholy. The record comes to a heartbreaking faux conclusion on "Worse to Live," then continues on for two more songs, the adequate but misplaced "Untitled" and the experimental "Thunderstorm," which is a nine-minute experiment in stringing slivers of songs together into one interconnected whole. Though the last fifteen minutes of the album is still strong material, it might have been better saved for another album or single; as good as the music is, Sweet still seems to overstay his welcome. Still, there are worse complaints to be made about an album than that it's too much of a good thing, which is the worst you can say about In Reverse.