The Replacements
Tim

Reviewing the Replacements is as difficult as reviewing the Sex Pistols or Nirvana.

It's difficult for me, as I'm used to focusing on the technical analysis of the tracks rather than the "emotional" component. Not that the Mats' songs (as we like to call them) lack interest from a formal point of view, but it seems clear that their compositional creativity and execution elegance were always subordinate to conveying strong, intense, and immediate feelings. Like the Sex Pistols and Nirvana, the Replacements favored substance over content.

Their imagery wasn't dissimilar to that of many other fellow adventurers, dealing with the need to express the joys and pains of American youth of their time (even though the greatness of these bands lies in the universality of their message): Adolescents, Descendents, Husker Du, Soul Asylum, Lemonheads are just some of the bands that contributed to making the fateful step from hardcore to indie, in the heart of the '80s, shifting the focus of interest from the public dimension to the private one, from social issues to existential ones, from historical pessimism to cosmic pessimism, from anger to resignation, from action to contemplation. The more superficial part of the criticism tends to assert that the Mats were the twin group of Husker Du (they both came from cold Minneapolis), placing the two bands at the helm of a fictitious "pop-core" branch. Let's clarify a bit: there's not just one way to combine pop (melody, catchiness) and hardcore (noise, speed). There's the Californian way (Bad Religion, Descendents, Adolescents, Pennywise), the Chicago way (Naked Raygun, Pegboy, Screeching Weasel), the New York way (Ramones, Misfits), the Minneapolis way (Husker Du, Replacements, Soul Asylum) and so on ... And even within the same local scenes, there were many differences.

Among all these bands, the Replacements turned out to be the most traditionalist: their models ranged from Chuck Berry to the Rolling Stones, from Big Star to Kiss. The rock of the old guard, revisited with searing melancholy. It took me a while to appreciate "Tim." At first listens, it left me puzzled: I found it too predictable at times, too sugary at others. Even today, if I have to find a flaw in Westerberg's band, it's in the more passively revivalist tracks, more calligraphically reproducing the noisy rock 'n' roll of the '50s, the one of various Little Richards and Jerry Lee Lewis: "Dose Of Thunder" and "Lay It Down, Clown" (like "Gary’s Got A Boner" from the previous album "Let it be"). I prefer the Mats when they knew how to give rock 'n' roll a new guise, adapting it to the anguished and desperate mood of the '80s. Anyway, after the initial indifference, I fell in love with this album. And it couldn't be otherwise: "Tim" hits straight to the heart and each listen unleashes a series of minor soul movements, palpitations, shivers, and memories.

It's impossible not to visualize, before the tremors of "Kiss Me On The Bus" or the trance of "Hold My Life," scenes of high school life, belonging to a more or less recent past (in my case): it thus becomes natural to speak of "college-rock" to somehow define Replacements' music. They are tracks where the band (formed by Westerberg, Mars, and the Stinson brothers) accompanies the leader's confessions with delicate instrumental weavings, convolutedly intertwined serpentine lines, dreamy textures that seem to replicate the ebb and flow of thoughts that crowd Westerberg's mind; thoughts, doubts, reminiscences, enthusiasms, unease that are conveyed to the listener with a unique effectiveness. For much of the album, this climate of suspension, enchantment, magic reigns. As daring as this comparison may seem, "Tim" sometimes seems like a recall of "Pet Sounds," with which it shares a bittersweet mood.

I have my own theory: Buddy Holly/Brian Wilson/Alex Chilton/Paul Westerberg, one for each decade, forming the tetrad of introverted-adolescent rockers. How can one not think of the introverted and sensitive Buddy Holly when faced with the jovial acoustic nursery rhyme of "Waitress In The Sky" or the rockabilly dizziness of "I’ll Buy"? And how can one not feel the sorrow of the mature Brian Wilson once immersed in the endless nostalgia of "Swingin’ Party"? “Bring your own lampshade, somewhere there’s a party/Here it’s never endin’, can’t remember when it started”, sung in a subdued tone, and then, in a sudden and illusory burst, “If bein’ afraid is a crime, we hang side by side/At the swingin’ party down the line”... well, the effect is that of an end-of-summer party, lived apart, with a drink in hand that's hard to swallow, and the head elsewhere ... or, it’s like seeing from the outside the romantic scene of a "Don’t Worry Baby," with Westerberg showing that, to a troubled soul like Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys were really tight...

But there isn’t just self-pity, suffering, regret in "Tim": there is also room for revenge, for release, for the cathartic scream, like the one that opens "Bastards Of Young," one of the underappreciated masterpieces of '80s rock (on par with "Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill" by the Huskers). An anthem, one to be sung at the top of one’s lungs, with heart in hand and head high. “God/What a mess/On the ladder of success ... We are the sons of no one/Bastards of young": with these lyrics, Westerberg takes his destiny in hand, unleashes his hoarse voice, and gives life to a generational anthem, not as destructive as "Anarchy" nor as self-destructive as "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but vital, energetic, rejuvenated, albeit with the usual veil of despair and bitterness.

The last part of the album continues in the spirit of a vivid power-pop, with the sighs of "Left Of The Dial" and the heart-tugging of "Little Mascara" (“You and I/fall together”), before the final ballad, that "Here Comes A Regular" that many even consider to be Westerberg's masterpiece, but which in my opinion isn't worth as much as a "Swingin’ Party" or as much as the three great ballads of "Let it be" ("Androgynus," "Unsatisfied," "Sixteen Blue"): it still remains, in its heartfelt Springsteenian classicism, a worthy end to an album to be counted among the most exciting musical experiences of the '80s.