For the second part of their loose “decades” trilogy, Hagerty and Herrema set out to capture a 1970s FM radio feel, with no song to be under four minutes, apparently. The Virgin money was spent wisely on a rural ranch in Virginia and a home studio with tons of gear. The end result was the most criminally overlooked and underrated album of the ’90s. Herrema has stated several times since its release that she is continually impressed that she was actually involved in the making of the record, and that’s saying something, coming from the person who also had something to do with Trux masterpieces Accelerator and Twin Infinitives. No doubt they had lost plenty of old-school Trux fans with Thank You, and plenty of folks were likely aghast at the sullied toilet bowl that graces Sweet’s cover (it wasn’t really puke and shit, kids, but still). Regardless, Sweet Sixteen is, quite simply, their Abbey Road or Pet Sounds. It’s an amazing achievement and pretty untouchable. With David Briggs in poor health and out of the picture, the group produced the album themselves, but it might as well have been handled by Becker and Fagen, with its Steely Dan-level attention to detail. In short, no stop here goes un-pulled. There are strings, keyboards, saxophones, booming choruses, proggy mid-sections, vocal interplay between Hagerty and Herrema, a busy and spot-on rhythm section in Dan Brown and Ken Nasta, and… guitar solos. Lots of glorious, over-the-top soloing. If it weren’t for the reputation(s) that preceded them and the fact that he’s a reclusive savant who’s already recording his next album, Hagerty would (should) have been on the cover of Guitar Player magazine any number of times in the ’90s. What may get lost in the denseness of these tracks is how much FUN the band seemed to be having, something that would be even more apparent on their following release, Accelerator. It’s near impossible to avoid singing along with the “Yeah yeah yeah’s” of the hooky and cowbell-laden “Can’t Have It Both Ways,” for example. One can also find little nuggets of nods to the music of the ’70s, as well. Herrema’s snickering at the end of the title track mimics Marc Bolan’s at the end of “Rabbit Fighter” on T. Rex’s seminal glam LP The Slider, while Hagerty’s riff that precedes verses on “Roswell Seeds And Stems” borrows heavily from X-Ray Spex’s “Warrior In Woolworths.” All in all, if you’re willing to patiently wade through some of the classic rock tropes, Sweet Sixteen does have a sweet payoff in the end. As the refrain in album-closer “Pol Pot Pie” goes, “If it rocks, put it on the table/ If it rolls, put it in the hole.” Sweet Sixteen does both, and well. Alas, the major label days were numbered, when Virgin couldn’t hang with the infamously gross covert art. Rather than continue to bet on an unpredictable horse, Virgin cut its losses by cutting Hagerty and Herrema a fat severance check (which paid for their next release) and set them free to return to their hometown of Drag City.