Scanning the tracklist of The Trouble with Sweeney's new EP, Fishtown Briefcase, is particularly instructive: Three of the six songs have proper names in or as their titles, suggesting that they are about real people and actual relationships. Hell, the Philadelphia band is even named for its singer and songwriter, Joey "Jojo" Sweeney, who mixes autobiography and fiction against the group's 70s-inflected indie pop, resourceful-- and unabashed-- enough to digress into an E Street interlude or an AM-rock guitar coda. Fishtown Briefcase (the title refers to a 24-pack of beer with a handle) features songs as character sketches, exploring how people think and act as well as what they mean specifically to Sweeney.
For example, the lead-off track, "Evelyn Rochman", recalls a Tadpole-style hook-up between a high school-age Sweeney and the title character, who is "my dad's wife's friend/ And in our ages there's a difference of ten." But "as the Penguin Café Orchestra plays low," she regales him with tales of Richard Hell and introduces him to both The Modern Lovers and modern love. Regardless of whether Evelyn is real or invented, Sweeney lets her craft his own coming-of-age, both musical and otherwise, while nicely understating the bittersweet brevity of their relationship.
Four songs into Fishtown Briefcase, "(A Girl Called) Young Song" finds Sweeney several years older and not nearly as hopeful, confronting another woman from his past. He sees Young Song, apparently an old friend of an old friend, "dancing on the tabletop in the backroom at the Love Lounge." But he can't join her fun, and "I've got nothing important in my life tonight" is the best he can come up with in the way of a pick-up line.
Even on the songs that aren't named after people, he still focuses on character. On "The City Let Me", Sweeney considers a particular city's effect on his musical development and claims he "got so sick of indie rock/ 'Cause it sounds so white and privileged/ And man, privilege is just another drag." This from a man playing well-groomed, Pavement-descended indie rock himself. What keeps a statement like that from being damningly hypocritical is Sweeney's unreliability as a narrator: His songwriting approach ostensibly focuses on other people as a way to get outside himself, but actually, people like Young Song and Evelyn Rochman are merely a means for Sweeney to get back into himself. While he doesn't always seem to be aware of this, he makes it perfectly clear for the listener: These people are his mirror.
As a result songs like "The Amazing Malcolm Smith (And His Off-Roading Motorcycle)" and the cover of Wings' "Listen to What the Man Said"-- which are about celebrities as opposed to Sweeney's personal acquaintances-- don't reflect quite so much, and the lovely specificity of his lyrics dulls just a bit. "The Amazing Malcolm Smith" delves into the homoeroticism between the titular stuntman and his Steve McQueen with a few innuendos like, "Don't you be afraid of bareback riding." While Sweeney never plays the material for laffs, the song still sounds a bit lightweight sandwiched between "The City Let Me" and "Young Song".
The final track, a don't-go-to-bed-angry ballad called "I Hope Your Sleep Is Dreamless", throws the previous five tracks into sharp relief, hinting that the people we're closest to are the ones we know the least. The lover, whether a man or woman, is never named, and the magnitude of their troubles is only implied, but the na-na-na's at the end don't sound like a real catharsis as much as like the unquenchable hope for one in the morning.
