New Matthew Sweet!

Matthew Sweet is set to release his first album in four years without Susanna Hoffs, Pete Droge or Shawn Mullins, and the world is a much better place for it.

Sunshine Lies comes out on August 26th via the increasingly-relevant Shout! Factory record label. You can hear three songs from the album at Matthew's MySpace page.

On first listen, my favorite of the three songs is easily "Byrdgirl", which may be one of the best things he's written in the last decade. The other two songs, "Flying" and "Room to Rock", aren't great, but are interesting to the extent that they emphasize a louder, more punk-oriented side than I'm used to hearing from Sweet.