suicaine: pw's most fully realized album

[cellarfullofnoise]

i just fully realized this: Suicaine Gratifaction is Paul Westerberg's most fully realized album.

[A Regular]

Explain?

[cellarfullofnoise]

He sounds confident, the songs are daring, the vocals are intimate, the production isn't an issue. It's the perfect marriage of home-baked sounds and West Coast sheen. Maybe it helps that there seems to have been a camaraderie between Westerberg and Was ... picturing those two having a ball with it at the label's expense is more fun than the "paid associates" of earlier albums or the lonely rec room recordings of later albums.

[randolph500]

I agree. His finest output...

[adamapple]

i dont know there are some real clunckers on that record, and some really flat performances...actor in the street???ugh, sunrise always listens?...aagh, and i think watever makes you happy is pretty timid....he seemed off his mark on this one....one man's opinion though>>>>>he reall sems to be holding back on the record, rather than letting it all hang out, which, in my opinion is when he really shines....

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[kgp]

newspaperchris said:

He sounds confident, the songs are daring, the vocals are intimate, the production isn't an issue. It's the perfect marriage of home-baked sounds and West Coast sheen. Maybe it helps that there seems to have been a camaraderie between Westerberg and Was ... picturing those two having a ball with it at the label's expense is more fun than the "paid associates" of earlier albums or the lonely rec room recordings of later albums.

I don't think he sounds confident; he sounds broken, but that's a huge part of the appeal. I agree with the melding of the home-cooked sound of the basement albums plus a little hollywood sheen. Suicaine is probably his best 'underproduced' album. (The basement ones are largely 'unproduced'.) Even if you're on the Suicaine hate train, you have to admit 'It's a Wonderful Lie' is one of his best solo songs to date.

For overall songwriting, I'd still pick Stereo.

[nazareth]

i agree with kgp. I hear almost no confidence. I hear depression. If eventually was his last ditch attempt at fame, suicaine was his realization that it would never happen.

It is however a great album. Him realizing that he would never be "huge" is what made him crank out the great records of the past couple years. I think he needed Suicaine to get over it.

[cellarfullofnoise]

I suppose confident isn't quite the right word, since the words he's saying don't exude confidence, but the way he says them still does for me. I agree about Whatever Makes You Happy being just a shade off what it could be, but that's the way it goes. Maybe it's all down to the production.

[kgp]

adamapple said:

;he reall sems to be holding back on the record, rather than letting it all hang out, which, in my opinion is when he really shines....

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I like when Paul pulls back a little. It's real and human and with that comes doubt and uncertainty. I'd much rather listen someone who isn't always sure of himself than phony rock 'n' roll posturing.

[TomT]

kgp said:

adamapple said:

;he reall sems to be holding back on the record, rather than letting it all hang out, which, in my opinion is when he really shines....

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am

I like when Paul pulls back a little. It's real and human and with that comes doubt and uncertainty. I'd much rather listen someone who isn't always sure of himself than phony rock 'n' roll posturing.

I'll drink to this.

I like everything about Suicaine except Actor and Bookmark. Although Bookmark is one that I'd like to check out more of. Lots of people seem to like this one.

[scoOter]

suicaine has some of my favorite paul songs, and some of my least favorite ones.

not unlike most any other paul album....

[Nickel]

I would say Suicaine is his most honest, more honest to me than even Stereo/Mono.

I love Suicaine. Hated it at first.

[landshark]

nickel said:

I would say Suicaine is his most honest, more honest to me than even Stereo/Mono.

I love Suicaine. Hated it at first.

Honesty, and soul, which was pretty much missing from Eventually, and even from 14 Songs, as good as many of those songs were.

Suicaine sort of akin to All Shook Down, depressed but heartfelt records made after trying, and failing, to reach for the brass ring.

[cford]

newspaperchris said:

I suppose confident isn't quite the right word, since the words he's saying don't exude confidence, but the way he says them still does for me. I agree about Whatever Makes You Happy being just a shade off what it could be, but that's the way it goes. Maybe it's all down to the production.

It might be fair to say that Suicane, as Westerberg's final major label release, was his most "professional"...but, I find the record itself almost unlistenable. It exudes a weird vibe.

CF

[cellarfullofnoise]

Actually I know what you mean about a weird vibe. Though part of that could be knowing what happened to the record after.

[Nickel]

The weird vibe is the sound of a man who sounds like he is going to give up and cash it all in.

[Nickel]

BTW, my problem with the Actor in the Street compared to Bookmark as the worst songs on the CD confuse me.

It is pretty obvious what Bookmark is about. Awkward subject matter. I wouldn't put it on a CD mix for anyone, but I think it is a great song lyrically.

Actor is just a waste. I've listened to it 100's of times and I still don't know what it is about. Nevemind that the vocals on it suck.

[kgirtz]

Out of longstanding affection for Suicaine, I feel the need to express my reaction to the record song-by-song.

When I first put on the disc and heard "It’s a Wonderful Lie", it was terrific to hear the studio glaze of Eventually missing in action. The song is sort of a summative statement for Paul, and reminds me of what I like about all his great songs - honesty, a little bit of friction and his voice. It fit well as the final song of his first night at the Guthrie a couple of years ago.

Self-Defense reminds me of an early Leonard Cohen song. The off-kilter piano and French horn combo do a great job echoing the lonely lyric. The final turn of phrase "it’s wrong to commit a suicide but it’s only in self-defense" is pretty far up there in my mental list of great Westerberg lines.

"Best Thing That Never Happened" is a curious song. The lyric reminds me a little of the Elvis Costello song "Just About Glad" written with a little more regret. Jim Keltner's drumming is one of the best things about the track, and the guitar tone is solid, but I've always thought that the arrangement was too rote. Another lead guitar line throughout or a more varied guitar rhythm would have improved the song. When Suicaine was released, there was talk of a very short tour (including a SXSW appearance if memory serves). No doubt, songs like "Best Thing" would have taken on new lives with a band .

Paul's depression following the Eventually tour seems the direct inspiration for "Lookin' Out Forever" and some of the other songs on Suicaine (I just noticed that on the Troubador bootleg from the end of that tour, Paul uses the “stone on a grave” line at the end of a song). The Neil Young-ish guitar, the driving drumming of Mr. Josh Freese, the lyric, the throaty vocal all make this something I turn up on the way to work, on the interstate, while I’m shaving, doing carpentry, you name it. I wish I’d stuck around MPLS for the third night at the Guthrie to see this followed by Paul’s guitar-smashing bit. The arrangement of this tune has what the equally well-written “Final Hurrah” could use – some sweep in the melody and variation in the attack.

After the faded feedback, the glide into “Born for Me” is like a breath of morning air with a cup of coffee in my hand. The ache that Paul would later touch on in “Only Lie Worth Telling” rests just enough in some of the lines to keep this from being a straight Hallmark card. Even as he is telling the “you” of his affection, his voice sounds vulnerable enough to get crushed any second. As Nick Hornby has noted, the one-hand piano solo could not have been more perfectly executed.

“Final Hurrah” suffers from some of the same arrangement problems as “Best Thing” and not enough of the snap of “Lookin’ Out Forever.” No matter how much Paul loves playing alone in his basement, working with other musicians prompts musical ideas that never emerge from a single player. Any of the bands he has played with could have pushed this song into overdrive. Still, I love the lyric and the way it is sung. “Cross me off your list in the saa-aa-aand.”

In contrast, the one man band playing “Tears Rolling Up Our Sleeves” does a great job with the arrangement. Organ, guitar and drums all work in this one to produce a full sounding song that has only improved with repeated listening.

“Fugitive Kind” is the kitchen-sink song of this album, much like “Trumpet Clip” from the previous record. The piano intro, with its great foreboding feel, seems like a separate piece from the rest of the track, which seems to throw every possible instrument and vocal effect into a blender to come up with something that seems less than the sum of its parts.

When the record came out, I was not crazy about “Sunrise Always Listens”, but in the ensuing years, it has grown on me…perhaps listening to it a few too many times in the wee hours.

“Whatever Makes You Happy” jangles along nicely. It reminds me a little of “When it Began” as a poppy musical element in a mostly bleak record.

If there is anything I can make out of “Actor in the Street”, well…maybe it is an attempt at a surreal lyric ala “Rainy Day Woman.” I don’t have the antipathy for it that other folk do, but it adds nothing to Suicaine.

“Bookmark” works for me. I like the piano part. Unlike some, who think Westerberg is affecting some understanding that he doesn’t really have, it seems more that he is self-effacing on this one. A good portrait.

In the end, what does it for me about this record is the strength of the songs that I really like and the overall effect. Stereo has a better batting average, but the mood of Suicaine moved me when it was released and still does.

[kgp]

“Final Hurrah” suffers from some of the same arrangement problems as “Best Thing” and not enough of the snap of “Lookin’ Out Forever.” No matter how much Paul loves playing alone in his basement, working with other musicians prompts musical ideas that never emerge from a single player. Any of the bands he has played with could have pushed this song into overdrive. Still, I love the lyric and the way it is sung. “Cross me off your list in the saa-aa-aand.”

'Final Hurrah' sounded amazing on this past tour.