Rick Rubin guided Love and Rockets to a return to more guitar- based songs for 1996's Sweet F.A. While the band were living and working at Rubin's studio mansion, a fire broke out, which resulted in the band losing all of their gear, some of their demo recordings, and nearly their lives as well. A burnt guitar plucked from the debris is on the album's cover. The resulting album was inspired by some of their earliest influences - The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Can. It spins tales of passion and loss, carried on a fluid, moody throb. Undulating, hypnotic rhythms twine around melancholy lyrics which examine life at a primal level, as ethereal electronic effects play counterpoint to earthquake reverberating guitars.