Paul Westerberg
Stereo

Let me first thank Marco "Blasters" Paderni, owner for many years of a small shop in Scandiano (RE), as small as it was full of life, stories, and music, and what music; the store closed at the end of 2006 and Marco is now engaged in other ventures, but the spirit continues, thanks to the wonderful gems discovered within those walls, and especially the owner’s advice...  It is thanks to one of these recommendations that I discovered Paul Westerberg.

The first contact with this artist, like I believe many of the debaserian community, I had thanks to the soundtrack of the grunge-movie "Singles", which included "Dyslexic Heart" and "Waiting For Somebody", two indeed very pleasant and pop-like songs; I thought Westerberg was a songwriter like many others, relying on soundtracks for more visibility... God only knows how wrong I was.

The Replacements' story would deserve too much space, and this is not the place (perhaps we’ll delay to a few months from now, since the entire discography will be reissued by Rhino by the end of the year), and I still don't know Westerberg’s solo story too well, except for this "Stereo", his fourth "regular" album, not counting those released under the pseudonym Grandpaboy.

By the artist's own admission, this work is imperfect, frayed, and not well defined, recorded sometimes even badly, so much so that some tracks end brutally during a verse, and the guitars sometimes seem barely tuned.

"Stereo", despite the title, has nothing technological or hi-fi; it is undeniably a "home-made" record (in the true sense of the word), recorded in the living room, in the basement, or perhaps in the toilet, between the cat’s litter box and the laundry basket. With this album, Westerberg says goodbye to the major labels, big-budget productions, and his 30s, even though at the time he was already 43 (for God's sake, a little time to realize is permissible, right?).

Let's read the song titles together: they are full of negations ("No Place for You", "Nothing To No One", "Don't Want Never"), of dirt and boredom ("Dirt To Mud", "Boring Enormous"), necessary lies ("Only Lie Worth Telling") or simply unlucky days ("Let The Bad Times Roll") and they help us understand that Paul hasn’t changed his mind about the fact that the world still rather sucks, and that love might be the only thing that allows a man to keep going, at least as long as it lasts.

Sure, Westerberg is no longer twenty, and when once the experience was electric, furious, and chaotic, powered by the youthful and raunchy impetuosity of the Replacements, now we listen to melancholic tracks, often for voice and guitar only (acoustic or electric), in a couple of cases accompanied by the drums (it’s unknown who plays besides the author); if before it was being drunk and on tour for months that made life bearable, today it’s enough to drink a beer in good company and nostalgically remember the times when maybe you were more foolish but still had time to make up for your mistakes.

You won’t find edgy and inflated rock here (for that there’s the bonus CD "Mono" by Grandpa Boy), but only "scratched" and imprecise ballads, a bit like life, which never comes as you’d want; Paul Westerberg knows this, he tells us in his unique and moving way,  and for this, we thank him.