The assembling of Matthew Sweet [ tickets ]�s recently released "Time Capsule: The Best of Matthew Sweet 1990-2000" began as a perfunctory contractual obligation. "It was the last thing I owed under contract," he explained.

But by the time the album got to the final mixing stages, Sweet said the import of putting out a greatest hits LP got to him. "It was pretty intense emotionally. I went for a drive up along Highway 1 [in California] and listened to the thing a few times. It made me feel kind of melancholy. I haven�t listened to the earlier records in a really long time."

Among the 18 songs included in the compilation are Sweet�s power-pop staples "Girlfriend," "I�ve Been Waiting" and "Sick of Myself," along with a pair of newly written and previously unreleased songs, "Ready" and "So Far."

"We tended to pick more serious songs over the more fun, weird stuff ... and we put things on that we liked that people don�t know as well. For instance, 'Until You Break' is a ballad off of 'Blue Sky on Mars' that didn�t get made a single until late in the campaign. A lot of people liked it, but it didn�t really get heard that much. That was kind of a wild card."

Sweet said he penned the two new songs this summer in a songwriter�s version of a cram session. "I came home after doing a batch of dates in early July and I hunkered down for like a week. I made demos of the six or seven best song ideas. It was hard, though: how do you come up with something out of the blue that competes with the best of ... the last 10 years?

"I wanted the new songs to be lively and strong, not wistful. I went in with my friend Fred [Maher] and had a good time doing it. It all went so fast. The tracks were done five days after we started them."

Keeping busy, Sweet recently contributed the song "Big Sky" to a Kinks tribute album, "Every Night" to a Paul McCartney tribute, is presently mulling a song selection for a Robyn Hitchcock tribute and sat in on the Babyface-produced sessions for music to the upcoming flick "Josie and the Pussycats."

Now free of any label constraints, Sweet said he�s focusing on songwriting for the moment, and plans to make the rounds at the record companies a little later down the line.

"I�ve probably done about five songs. There�s a batch from early last year and a couple I really like. I want to write a lot. ... I�m doing stuff like playing drums for myself on demos. I usually get a real drummer, but I�ve been doing real spontaneous stuff and getting into the vibe of music and what I originally loved about it."