Paul Westerberg

A tiny sensor just went off in the Westerberg center of DaveB's brain. He'll be with you shortly, Jake. Everyone get out of the way unless you want to get run over.

That really depends on what you are looking for. Most of his modern stuff is melancholy and far-from-rocking (I love it.) SUICANE GRATIFICATION, MONO AND STEREO are all very good...but they might not be what you want them to be. I've seen PW twice in the last few years and, even live, his new music is hit or miss. The Grampa Boy stuff is good if you need a little more rock then folk...If you haven't seen COME FEEL ME TREMBLE yet you should certainly seek it out.

I'll risk it.

I think from a 'Mats perspective, Westerberg's strongest releases is/are Stereo/Mono. While 14 Songs is incredibly important to me in my development as a teenager and a 'Mats fan, I have to say that right now, it really seems to be just a continuation of ground trod in Don't Tell A Soul and All Shook Down. Stereo captures Westerberg's petulant rocker side while making room for the whole other album of softer ballads on Mono. Separating the the two sides of Westerberg into two albums might sound like a gimmick, and it is, but it provides him the leeway to explore both avenues fully without degenerating into bratty excess (Come Feel Me Tremble) or putting the listener to sleep (Folker). There's a very special place reserved in my heart for both Suicaine Gratifaction and Eventually as well, since they both came at major turning points in my life, but I'm not sure how they'd hold up to me now or to anyone unfamiliar with them.

The cool thing about Westerberg's oeuvre is that there's always, always, always has at least one absolute gem of a song on even his weakest albums, and that song usually shines all the brighter in comparison to the surrounding also-rans. The only record I would actively dissuade you from getting is Come Feel Me Tremble. DaveB may argue it's great for all I know, but it just did not connect with me on any level other than "Oh, that's a great so--fuck, he's distorting it all to hell again." Sometimes he doesn't even finish the songs he starts. There's edgy and there's lazy, and I'll be damned if I can tell the difference between them when it comes to Westerberg anymore. The doc released around the same time as CFMT is interesting, but I can't say it illuminated anything for me.

Just to be clear: I love him, love him, love him. I moved to Minneapolis in large part because of how hard The Replacements hit me in high school. But the "I don't care anymore, so leave me alone" schtick wore thin with me when I hit 30. Or maybe I was stripped of the illusion that it was only just a put-on. It's hard to get excited about his music when it's obvious he isn't.

LeeVSBenway and bendrix pretty much covered it, but I'll mount a defense of 14 Songs. It's very much in line with the Singles songs and some of the more upbeat stuff on All Shook Down, but it's also his only solo album that combines late era-Mats-style rock and a musically competent rhythm section. Everything since has sacrificed one or the other.

Eventually and Suicaine, the other two albums he made before taking to the basement as a solo artist in the truest sense, are both really good in their own ways, but they're more melancholy throughout, and when he does turn it up a bit, it seems a little more tentative (like "Century," for instance).

Stereo/Mono, Come Feel Me Tremble, and Folker all offer grittier rock songs, but they come at the expense of even a bare minimum of studio professionalism. Westerberg's often a terrible drummer*, he's not always the best judge of his own material, and sometimes he doesn't bother fleshing out his ideas or even finishing his songs (sadly, this isn't confined to Come Feel Me Tremble, but even afflicts the generally excellent Stereo). The next time he makes an album, I'm hoping that he'll use "His Only Friends," the band he took out on tour last time and go with an actual producer to kick his ass when the songs need work.

If you don't mind the polish of Don't Tell a Soul and All Shook Down and you want a rock album, give 14 Songs a shot first. If you want a studio-polished downer album somewhat along the lines of the quiet ASD tracks, try Suicaine. If you want to sample his later, home-recorded stuff, start with Stereo/Mono. Stay far away from Dead Man Shake by Grandpaboy. Come Feel Me Tremble may be spotty, but Dead Man Shake - an ill-advised foray into fake blues - is probably the worst thing he's ever put out.

* I think a number of the drum tracks are actually simple drum machine patterns with Westerberg playing along. Sometimes, it works, like on much of Mono. Sometimes, it sounds like absolute garbage. It almost ruins the studio version of "Crackle and Drag," one of the best songs he's written post-Mats.

God, I had completely forgotten about that one--or maybe I willfully repressed the memory. I'd almost rather listen to blackface minstrels covering Zeppelin than that record.

And I'd like to add that my all-time favorite Westerberg solo song is "World Class Fad," which can be found on 14 Songs. And I'm getting all misty-eyed just thinking of "First Glimmer" and "Runaway Wind."

And I love the Singles stuff. Looooove it.


And...

He's got a "Best of" collection, too, but I'll leave that to more educated minds than mine* to tell you if that's a good overview or not.



*Yes, that could be anyone. Ha, ha, you sonsofbitches.

Yeah, me, too. It was a minority opinion when that soundtrack came out, I think. There was a small, incense-smelling music store I used to go to that specialized in bootleg cassettes of Jane's Addiction, Zeppelin, Soundgarden, etc. That summer, the stoned owners/employees all seemed to have jumped on the grunge bandwagon, and I actually heard one talking about how much she loved the soundtrack, except for "Paul Wess-tur-burg or whatever" (she seemed to have trouble getting his name out).

I found it kind of boggling, since a lot of the bands the store seemed to champion and were on that soundtrack (Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees) came out of that punk-radio pop mix that the Replacements helped pioneer.

DaveB really does have a dyslexic heart.

I always suspected him to be a half-angel, half-tart.

Nah. Just cataracts.

Just bought the new "49:00" .49 cent download off Amazon. So far, it's good, solid Westerberg goodness.

Can we just rename the music forum "DaveB" already?

We tried. His royalty demands were outrageous.

There's a fun little medley of covers towards the end of the Westerberg track, by the way. He does some interesting song layering throughout the second half that's kind of cool and kind of maddening.

Yeah, it's old-school Westerberg in that sense - it's somewhere between a fantastic pop move and utter chaos.

The nature of the album (one long track that gets more and more disjointed as it goes on) begs to be interpreted as some sort of big statement, but it's by a songwriter who continually defies attempts to classify his work as having any big statements at all.

Still, there are at least a couple tracks that are very obviously about his dad dying (one that seems about as straight-up autobiographical as he's ever gotten), and some that have a lot to do with his son. It's as if the noise just keeps building up to the end, which results in that cover medley (more a set of frustratingly interrupted snippets, really) and, finally, a song that features his son singing (for better or worse).

There's a lot of history in some of those covers - he covered Alice Cooper's "Eighteen" way back in the early days of the Replacements, he covered some of the others in his solo days. Considering that and the sheer number of songs that seem to fly by (some just appear for a line or two between fully-fleshed "real" songs), it seems like he's doing some purging here - like he's clearing out the vaults, musically and emotionally. But I may be reading way too much into it.

Supposedly he's handed off 60 songs to his agent so far that have nothing to do with 49:00. Just his desire to release this album for next to nothing reminds me all over of why I love this guy though. This isn't a crap album by any stretch. Sure, it's not consistent but it wouldn't really be a Paul album if it was. I'm only about halfway in but so far I'm really enjoying it.