For guitarist/songwriter Matthew Sweet [ tickets ], it evidently wasn't enough to put together last year's critically-acclaimed "The Thorns" with Pete Droge and Shawn Mullins.

While on a Santa Ynez, CA, ranch recording that project, Sweet experienced "a spontaneous explosion" of inspiration, which led to a few early morning lyric-writing sessions under a tree. In a scant few days, the entire "Living Things" album--which hit stores in early September--was written.

When it was time to add instrumentation to "Things," Sweet and drummer Ric Menck laid down basic tracks--the initial guide-vocal recordings ended up on the final product-- followed by layers of guitars and bass from Greg Leisz, various keyboards and stylistics by the enigmatic Van Dyke Parks, and other bass (Tony Marisco), guitar (Pete Phillips), steel drums (Doug Lacy) and harmonica (Roger Handy) tracks.

But even that album isn't enough, as Sweet has released "Kimi Ga Suki"--originally issued in Japan in 2003--and "Living Things" simultaneously.

liveDaily: What was the overlap between recording with The Thorns and the first writing nuggets of "Living Things?"

Matthew Sweet: We were at the end of these couple of weeks, and I think we were sort of getting burned out. It's intense to have to be diplomatic all day with two people you don't really know [laughs], and trying to write songs. We did really well, I think, but, toward the end, everybody got kind of cranky. I think one of those days we sort of knocked off early, and I was in my room, and I spouted out all these ideas. I think it was a lot of built up frustration, and a bunch of things just kind of popped out. Then, I think we had a day or two left there, and I got up early for a couple of mornings and worked on writing the words for those songs. And that's about three-fourths of "Living Things." There's maybe two or three songs that didn't originate from that time. It's kind of funny; the basic ideas for the songs came really fast. A couple of hours, and then I worked on the words a little bit afterwards.

Q: Is songwriting always that easy for you?

A: It kind of is, in a weird way. It's funny you ask that. I haven't been doing a whole lot of writing lately, because I've been traveling and doing other stuff, not really in that mode too much. Yesterday, I had done an interview for some magazine earlier in the day, and we were talking, (and the interviewer asked) 'How do you get inspired to write songs?' And I said, 'I have to have a certain kind of feeling, or urge, or whatever. And then it pops out.' Then, later on in the day, I got that feeling, and made up a song really fast. And it is really fast. In fact, it always bugged me; people do reviews and think that you've really carefully crafted this thing--and to some degree you do--but I would always feel kind of weird about it, because it always felt like ... nothing, you know? It's really intangible, doing music, because it's not like a solid object.

I've really thought about this lately, because I've been learning how to do pottery. I've been throwing pottery on a wheel. It's really fun, but it's so different, because I have the object. It's sort of problematic, because they build up and then you have all these objects that you couldn't give away to your family! [laughs] Music is really ethereal; it's hard to get a grasp on. So you always have a sense--and this is when it's the most fun for me--you have those moments of, "Where did that come from?" You just get into the mode, and it's hard to imagine how that happened, exactly.

Q: The skeletons of "Living Things" came together with your drummer Ric Menck, and you used a lot of the original guide vocals on the final product. Why?

A: I had it in my mind to fix the vocals up and re-do all this stuff, and when I tried to go back, I just didn't want to mess with any of it. I didn't know where to begin. I felt like I was too far from it and that I might just mess it up.

Q: Do you feel that many albums today are over-produced? Too much Pro Tools?

A: Oh yeah, totally. Although, I don't know, because probably the records that aren't that way, I don't hear. I'm more likely to hear new stuff if it's piped in somewhere, because I don't keep up on new music. If I'm working on music of my own, which is a lot of the time, I don't listen to music in my free time--I enjoy silence. [laughs] So I'm sure there are lots of groups that don't use Pro Tools. But it's not the Pro Tools, it's what you do with it. I mean, I liked Kraftwerk, but for the kind of music I do, that feeling of being human and not being perfectly synched-up, I like that. To me now, it makes more sense than ever, because it will immediately make something feel wild compared to everything else.