Sunday, August 22, 2010

The Replacements - Let It Be


It started with Androgynous—piano and voice with spacy production and a sound so pained you’d think Westerberg was talking about himself. Of all the way-acclaimed albums the ‘Mats had (as it goes, the critics love them all), only “Let It Be” remained, due to this one song.

A year of that, and I guess “Sixteen Blue” must’ve come on shuffle one day, cuz there’s no reason I would’ve been tinkering around with this album otherwise. A gorgeous mess of notes, that song, and a dozen or so listens afterwards, I put the whole album on and noticed its entirety is a gorgeous mess of notes.

On the second run-through, I was finally hooked for good with the end of “Seen Your Video.” I guess albums don’t usually have climaxes, but this one’s is marvelous. “We don’t wanna know, We don’t wanna know, We don’t wanna know”—it’s about music videos but basically he’s shouting “We don’t give a shit,” in context (and out). There is no punk out there more pissed off, defiant, and somehow at the same time so anthemic.

And so give or take 30 plays into the album, I’m still not tired of it. I hope it’s got the longevity of others that have taken me so by storm, or maybe it’s just a raucous mood I’m in (key point: these drunks fucked up their chance at success because, well, they got drunk too often). If no song is like another; if the notes are so interesting they belie the simple chords changes; if the playing is so loose-perfect you wonder what side of the pro-am fence these dudes are on; how can I get tired of the sound?

I can’t encompass something this good. I can only hope someone else feels it the way I do. And so to help with that, let me just say, “Gary’s Got a Boner” works best in sequence, between the climax and the sweetest song on the album; don’t forget “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” has more mock-snarl attitude than anything else on the album; and a Kiss cover remains a Kiss song, no matter who performs it.