Post by allshookup on May 30, 2006 10:55:47 GMT -5
The REPLACEMENTS AMG Discography
Don’t Tell a Soul
All of the slick production of Pleased to Meet Me couldn't prepare listeners for the glossy sound of Don't Tell A Soul, the Replacements' last-ditch attempt at mainstream success. Bathed with washes of synthesizers, shining guitars, backing vocals and a shimmering, AOR-oriented production, Don't Tell a Soul puts an end to the Replacements and begins Paul Westerberg's solo career. The bulk of the songs are self-consciously mature, as Westerberg looks back on his career (the autobiographical "Talent Show") and is haunted by the past ("Rock N Roll Ghost," "Darlin' One"), as he attempts to refashion himself as a craftsman. A few of these attempts work, particularly the country-rock ballad "Achin' to Be" and the arena-rock stab "I'll Be You," but the lite-funk workout "Asking Me Lies" and the stuttering "I Won't" are flat-out embarassing. And the rest of the album suffers from Westerberg's determination to be adult. The songs are too self-consciously mature, and the band functions as a supporting act for the lyrics, which lack the unpretentious poetry of his best work. Ironically, Westerberg's desire to be an "adult" is the reason why radio ignored Don't Tell a Soul, because it meant that the record lacked both rockers or power-ballads which would have given them air-time. And most old fans found the production too heavy to make sorting through the album worthwhile.
- Talent Show
"Talent Show" kicks off 1988's Don't Tell a Soul -- the slightly disappointing album many Replacements fans consider the beginning of the end -- with a wink of knowing self-parody. By this point, the Replacements were known to the general public, if at all, as that band of screwed-up boozers who weren't even likely to make it through a set without a bunch of half-finished '70s covers or a drunken punch-up enlivening the proceedings. (Much like Guided by Voices in the ensuing decade, the Replacements were adopted by a cadre of fans more interested in the band's prodigious beer intake than their music.) The lyrics of "Talent Show" self-mockingly describe a band at the very beginning of its career, a hapless and pilled-up crew that continues to fight the good fight in the face of dwindling returns. The parallels are obvious, but Paul Westerberg sings it with a self-deprecating smile and manages a few barbed digs at "the competition." Musically, however, the song is basically a pale rewrite of 1984's "I Will Dare" crossed with a smidge of "Alex Chilton," and Matt Wallace's perhaps too-clean production gives the song a thematically inappropriate gloss. As a result, the song's happy-go-lucky spirit is in the face of diminishing returns.
- Achin’ to Be
The next-to-last Replacements album, 1989's Don't Tell a Soul, divided fans and critics alike: most felt that the once gloriously ragged band had succumbed to AOR gloss, while a few thought main songwriter Paul Westerberg might finally live up to his hitmaking potential. Whichever side you took, there was no denying that Don't Tell a Soul contained some well-crafted songs, and "Achin' to Be" was one of the best. A country-tinged ballad, it's an ode to a woman the singer seems to be watching across the proverbial crowded room. She's described as being "kind of like" an artist, a poet, and a movie, but in every instance a stunted one, ripe with feelings but unable to express them, or misunderstood by her audience. At times it's hard to tell if the singer is romanticizing the woman as a thwarted artist or dismissing her as a dilettante. That tension characterizes much of Paul Westerberg's best songwriting, of course, and indeed it's tempting to view "Achin' to Be" as emblematic of the peculiar position the Replacements held for much of their career, pulled between vulnerability and sneering isolation. "Achin' to Be" is such a solid, pleasing yet generic song that it would seem to be perfect cover material for both pop and country artists, but so far it has not found a life outside its initial recording.
- I’ll Be You
The Replacements' sole "hit" single (it actually reached the middle of Billboard's Hot 100 in the spring of 1989, helped no doubt by the band's first non-sarcastic, non-confrontational video, which got a lot of MTV play), "I'll Be You" is unfortunately at best a second-tier Paul Westerberg song. Although the song has one terrific one-liner ("a rebel without a clue," a line that Tom Petty -- the headlining act on the Replacements' sole national tour on the arena level -- blatantly stole a few years later in "Into the Great Wide Open") and an intriguingly off-kilter structure that doesn't get around to the first chorus until the song is half over, it's much less lyrically incisive than earlier Westerberg masterpieces like "Sixteen Blue" and "Can't Hardly Wait," and the tune isn't one of Westerberg's most memorable, being built on a clanking rhythm guitar riff that lacks both forward motion and melodic invention. Sure, it sounded better than most of what was on MTV in the spring of 1989, but compared to newer, younger, and hungrier bands like, say, the Pixies (whose near-mainstream breakthrough with Doolittle happened around the same time as this single), it was starting to look like the Replacements had missed their moment.
Don’t Tell a Soul
All of the slick production of Pleased to Meet Me couldn't prepare listeners for the glossy sound of Don't Tell A Soul, the Replacements' last-ditch attempt at mainstream success. Bathed with washes of synthesizers, shining guitars, backing vocals and a shimmering, AOR-oriented production, Don't Tell a Soul puts an end to the Replacements and begins Paul Westerberg's solo career. The bulk of the songs are self-consciously mature, as Westerberg looks back on his career (the autobiographical "Talent Show") and is haunted by the past ("Rock N Roll Ghost," "Darlin' One"), as he attempts to refashion himself as a craftsman. A few of these attempts work, particularly the country-rock ballad "Achin' to Be" and the arena-rock stab "I'll Be You," but the lite-funk workout "Asking Me Lies" and the stuttering "I Won't" are flat-out embarassing. And the rest of the album suffers from Westerberg's determination to be adult. The songs are too self-consciously mature, and the band functions as a supporting act for the lyrics, which lack the unpretentious poetry of his best work. Ironically, Westerberg's desire to be an "adult" is the reason why radio ignored Don't Tell a Soul, because it meant that the record lacked both rockers or power-ballads which would have given them air-time. And most old fans found the production too heavy to make sorting through the album worthwhile.
- Talent Show
"Talent Show" kicks off 1988's Don't Tell a Soul -- the slightly disappointing album many Replacements fans consider the beginning of the end -- with a wink of knowing self-parody. By this point, the Replacements were known to the general public, if at all, as that band of screwed-up boozers who weren't even likely to make it through a set without a bunch of half-finished '70s covers or a drunken punch-up enlivening the proceedings. (Much like Guided by Voices in the ensuing decade, the Replacements were adopted by a cadre of fans more interested in the band's prodigious beer intake than their music.) The lyrics of "Talent Show" self-mockingly describe a band at the very beginning of its career, a hapless and pilled-up crew that continues to fight the good fight in the face of dwindling returns. The parallels are obvious, but Paul Westerberg sings it with a self-deprecating smile and manages a few barbed digs at "the competition." Musically, however, the song is basically a pale rewrite of 1984's "I Will Dare" crossed with a smidge of "Alex Chilton," and Matt Wallace's perhaps too-clean production gives the song a thematically inappropriate gloss. As a result, the song's happy-go-lucky spirit is in the face of diminishing returns.
- Achin’ to Be
The next-to-last Replacements album, 1989's Don't Tell a Soul, divided fans and critics alike: most felt that the once gloriously ragged band had succumbed to AOR gloss, while a few thought main songwriter Paul Westerberg might finally live up to his hitmaking potential. Whichever side you took, there was no denying that Don't Tell a Soul contained some well-crafted songs, and "Achin' to Be" was one of the best. A country-tinged ballad, it's an ode to a woman the singer seems to be watching across the proverbial crowded room. She's described as being "kind of like" an artist, a poet, and a movie, but in every instance a stunted one, ripe with feelings but unable to express them, or misunderstood by her audience. At times it's hard to tell if the singer is romanticizing the woman as a thwarted artist or dismissing her as a dilettante. That tension characterizes much of Paul Westerberg's best songwriting, of course, and indeed it's tempting to view "Achin' to Be" as emblematic of the peculiar position the Replacements held for much of their career, pulled between vulnerability and sneering isolation. "Achin' to Be" is such a solid, pleasing yet generic song that it would seem to be perfect cover material for both pop and country artists, but so far it has not found a life outside its initial recording.
- I’ll Be You
The Replacements' sole "hit" single (it actually reached the middle of Billboard's Hot 100 in the spring of 1989, helped no doubt by the band's first non-sarcastic, non-confrontational video, which got a lot of MTV play), "I'll Be You" is unfortunately at best a second-tier Paul Westerberg song. Although the song has one terrific one-liner ("a rebel without a clue," a line that Tom Petty -- the headlining act on the Replacements' sole national tour on the arena level -- blatantly stole a few years later in "Into the Great Wide Open") and an intriguingly off-kilter structure that doesn't get around to the first chorus until the song is half over, it's much less lyrically incisive than earlier Westerberg masterpieces like "Sixteen Blue" and "Can't Hardly Wait," and the tune isn't one of Westerberg's most memorable, being built on a clanking rhythm guitar riff that lacks both forward motion and melodic invention. Sure, it sounded better than most of what was on MTV in the spring of 1989, but compared to newer, younger, and hungrier bands like, say, the Pixies (whose near-mainstream breakthrough with Doolittle happened around the same time as this single), it was starting to look like the Replacements had missed their moment.