Action: The Sweet Anthology

by Stephen Thomas ErlewineSweet have never gotten the respect they deserve — that's what happens when your specialty is good times. Ben Edmonds perfectly explains the error of this disrespect in his liner notes to Shout! Factory's wonderful Action: The Sweet Anthology, but even he dismisses the group's earliest bubblegum singles, and their inclusion is a big reason why Action stands apart from all previous Sweet compilations. Most Sweet compilations — and there are many, their discography cluttered with dynamite doses of the hits and cheap recyclings alike — stick to the basic canon, beginning with the stomping "Little Willy," running through "Ballroom Blitz," and ending with "Love Is Like Oxygen," their first and last big hit not written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, with a handful spotlighting that early bubblegum. What distinguishes Action is that it traces Sweet's entire history, opening up with a clutch of sugary singles before deeply exploring the glory years of the mid-'70s and then closing out the saga by running into the '80s, after vocalist Brian Connolly had left the group and the rest of the bandmembers were winding down. This gives Action a narrative lacking in other Sweet compilations, but it also opens the door for a lot of terrific unheralded music from throughout their career. "Funny Funny" might be standard singalong bubblegum, but "Co-Co" and its rewrite, "Poppa Joe," are dynamic Caribbean-flavored candy, while "Alexander Graham Bell" is a glorious piece of symphonic weirdness, as good as any bubblegum hit from the early '70s, and the selected latter-day tracks that close the comp are respectable navigations of new wave and arena rock. It's great to have the opening and closing chapters of the band's career here, but it's even better that Action digs deep into Sweet's glam glory years, surrounding the hits with album cuts that more than hold their own. Coming after those sticky-sweet early cuts, "Little Willy," "Wig-Wam Bam," and "Blockbuster" all bear a strong bubblegum foundation, but the crunching guitars and brutal drums are pure rock & roll. And that is the brilliance of Sweet and why the best of their music endures: it provides trashy teenage rebellion via shouted chants and loud guitars, seeming ephemeral but proving to be eternal because it sounds so good. It can sound good on those skimpy ten-track comps, but here on this thorough 32-track retrospective it's never sounded better, nor has it ever been easier to appreciate just how good — and, yes, underrated — Sweet actually are.