The Replacements – An Incomplete Backwards Appraisal

My relationship with the Replacements—the erstwhile Minneapolis punk/power pop band from the 1980s—has gone in fits and starts. I do enjoy and appreciate them, but I haven't been their truest fan; I have fewer than half of their recordings, but I'm enthusiastic about what I do have. Besides, they could always use a bigger audience...even if they're not around anymore. So here's my take on...well, parts of the latter half of their career.

Replacements 101

Since this is a blog that primarily addresses grammar and editing topics, a quick introduction for readers new to the Replacements is reasonable...so here you go.

The Replacements were a 1980s post-punk band from Minneapolis that never got the commercial success that their critical accolades would imply. Indeed, the band forms part of a triumvirate of critically acclaimed, highly influential, but commercially failed American bands including the Velvet Underground (from the late 1960s) and Big Star (from the 1970s). The Replacements consisted of singer, guitarist, and songwriter Paul Westerberg; drummer Chris Mars; guitarist Bob Stinson; and bassist Tommy Stinson (the latter two brothers).

Starting with roots in sloppy but energetic punk, the Mats (short for "Placemats," a bastardization of Replacements) soon began adding ballads and straight-ahead pop to its repertoire, ostensibly becoming more accessible to its potential audience. The band's greatest critical success arguably came with 1984's Let It Be, nearly universally lauded as the Replacements' best album and one of the best of the 1980s. The band's hard-drinking lifestyle both characterized and stymied its success. At its worst, it resulted in an infamous performance on Saturday Night Live that got them banned; a few years later, guitarist Bob Stinson left the band partly due to creative differences, partly due to drug and alcohol issues.

The Replacements enjoyed some modest commercial success in the late '80s with albums Pleased to Meet Me and Don't Tell a Soul, but to some die-hard fans, the sound on these albums seemed slick and a sign of selling out. After the Replacements broke up in 1991, singer Paul Westerberg embarked on a solo career, beginning with a few great songs for the soundtrack to the movie Singles.

All Shook Down

My exploration of the Replacements started off on the wrong foot when I got All Shook Down shortly after its release in 1990, based on a four-star rave written up in Rolling Stone. The Replacements' last album was supposedly another great representation of raucous, wild, drunk, snot-nosed punk rockers. But the more I listened to it, the more I felt I was missing something essential to rock and roll. All Shook Down was pleasant enough but too laid back and lacked urgency considering its reputation. Even "My Little Problem," a duet between Paul Westerberg and Concrete Blonde singer Johnette Napolitano, never got as wild as I wanted it to—and that was the hardest song here. In contrast, though, All Shook Down's best songs were ballads. The tearjerking "Sadly Beautiful," is accompanied on viola by John Cale of Velvet Underground fame. Meanwhile, "The Last" is a plea to an alcoholic significant other to please stop drinking and "make this last one really the last." (At the helm of one of the beeriest bands in rock history, Westerberg knew a thing or two about that sort of thing.) At any rate, All Shook Down is possibly the last album someone should consider when wanting to discover the Replacements and what made them so great. Especially given their reputation.

Pleased to Meet Me

Just as high school ended for me in 1993, I decided to give the Replacements another shot. Since I was bound for college in Minnesota, this seemed especially appropriate. So, I picked up 1987's Pleased to Meet Me and subsequently saw a better glimpse of what this band was capable of. Though it holds a reputation for being the Replacements' last great album, it still didn't reflect what I'd learned about them. The music was, again, more mature than I'd imagined it should be. For every true rocker, like "I.O.U." and "Shooting Dirty Pool," there's a slower song, be it the ersatz jazz "Nightclub Jitters" or the scintillating heartbreaker "Skyway."

The thing that started to stand out, though, was the lyrics. Westerberg doesn't always have the most understandable diction; it can get as inscrutable as Murmur-era Michael Stipe. But when his voice comes through, it reveals some great literary prowess. Check out the harrowing suicide note of "The Ledge," complete with a plummeting scream at the end. He can work in some zingers, too: "You're the coolest guy that I ever have smelt" from "Shooting Dirty Pool" is a particularly sharp cut.

"I Don't Know" is an accurate snapshot of the Replacements themselves at this point. Westerberg—or perhaps a manager—keeps asking the band all sorts of questions with increasing urgency. ("Do we give it up? Should we give it hell?...Our lawyer's on the phone? What did we do now?...Are you guys still around?") Meanwhile, to each question, the band drunkenly slurs "I don't know" over and over again. Finally fed up, Westerberg yells, "Whatcha gonna do with your life?" Then he responds for them, his voice dripping with defiant disgust: "Nothing." This tug-of-war only partly explains why these boys struggled with success. The chorus's statement of purpose explains more: "One foot in the door, the other one in the gutter. The sweet smell that you adore? I think I'd rather smother." And there, perfectly put, is the Replacements' central dilemma. Many fans couldn't understand why the band never made it as far as, say, R.E.M. (admittedly a high bar to reach), but this line reveals the self-defeating bent that both defined and thwarted the Mats.

Pleased to Meet Me exemplified the Replacements pretty well. Unfortunately, it didn't compel me to invest more time in them. By this point, I completely understood when one of my friends wrote this about Winona Ryder: "She's the reason I know who the Replacements are, although that's a point neither for nor against her." They were unquestionably good. But not much beyond that.

My Little Problem

Here's the thing: I wrote above about the Replacements being "raucous, wild, drunk, snot-nosed punk rockers." That was what was always sold in everything I read about them. Here was a band that was equally known for its jaw-droppingly visceral shows as its god-awful drunken disasters. If you saw them, part of the fun was that you never knew which was going to happen. As a consequence, I expected epic craziness from the albums and never got it. There was always some level of disappointment, however subconscious, that underlay my enjoyment. And it probably kept me from becoming a true Replacements fan.

What wasn't sold as much was the brilliant songwriting and musicianship that transcended punk—and it truly was brilliant. It went on to rock and to pop, providing a huge foundation for popular music in the 1990s. Maybe I needed a compartment to put the Replacements in so I could appreciate them more. Maybe that would have allowed me to appreciate their later music more as they grew older and had less energy with which to support their legendary shows of yore.

(To make this point blatantly clear, if you are interested in the Replacements, expect excellent songwriting and great, hard power pop and post-punk. You won't be disappointed. Don't hold your breath for really raucous, crazy noise...at least in their later albums.)

Tim

A few years later, Tim was my next purchase. Why I got this album and not Let it Be, I don't know. Maybe the music store just didn't have Let it Be. At any rate, I got it, and it was finally closer to what I'd expected from the Replacements.

As mentioned above, Let it Be is pretty universally considered not only the best Replacements album, but one of the best albums of the 1980s, period. It garnered such critical praise that the band found itself being courted by major labels, wondering if they could handle that sweet smell that so many adored. Tim was their major label debut, catching the Replacements as they began to explore life beyond the gutter.

What's really notable about Tim, despite its youthful energy, is its pervasive negative bent. Many songs express some form of young adult insecurity: desperate unrequited longing ("Kiss Me on the Bus"), withering resentment ("Waitress in the Sky"), and self-destructive tendencies with a dash of dark humor ("Hold My Life," "Swingin' Party"). But "Bastards of Young" is possibly the most representative song of Tim; it has laid its claim as an anthem for all surly Gen Xers. Westerberg howls the pathetic statement-of-purpose for a generation: "Income tax deduction/One hell of a function," then follows it up with a cynical "It beats picking cotton/And waiting to be forgotten."

The two hardest songs here are sometimes considered the worst ones: "Dose of Thunder" and "Lay it Down Clown." But even as they're the "worst" (which on this album is still pretty damned good), they're still indispensable. "Lay it Down Clown" in particular careens along like a rollercoaster threatening to jump its track at any second; every instrument on the song is gloriously out of tune, and Westerberg howls just to keep up with the din. If this was the Replacements being terrible, man, that made me wish I could have seen them live.

The other side of the coin reveals the Replacements tightening up and throwing forth one of their all-time best anthems: the college rock paean "Left of the Dial." It already sounded nostalgic then—its lyrics concern a lost musician friend found and lost again while skimming the radio stations on a road trip. And it was a lovely hard rock song, punctuated at the end by an abrupt ending that doesn't dwell on being maudlin.

Tim's saddest moment comes at the end with "Here Comes a Regular," a serious contender for best Replacements song. The song finds the narrator—a hard-drinking barfly—going to his favorite bar, a place where everybody not only knows your name but calls it out loud and clear. But when he shows up, he's the only one there, prompting some hard soul-searching about his empty, alcoholic existence. The song's acoustic guitar is a cold shower of needles, a harsh foil to Westerberg's lonely, halting vocals. It's hard to imagine a more despondent way to end an album than this.

Tim—Let It Bleed Edition

In September 2023, Tim garnered renewed attention. Remixed by sound engineer Ed Stasium (of Ramones fame) and released as the Let It Bleed Edition, the new recording was a sudden revelation. In at least one reviewer's eyes, Tim had become the definitive Replacements album, supplanting Let it Be—a heretofore near-impossibility.

This leap in quality was just from remixing? Album remixes are fairly common nowadays, though having an album remixed nearly four decades after an original release raises eyebrows. But making such a drastic improvement demands attention. I had to listen to see what the uproar was all about.

On first listen, I was surprised. The songs sounded...nearer? more muffled? The aural equivalent of being in a studio covered with quilts, perhaps. But...no...muffled wasn't right. Further listens made me realize that Tim's music actually sounds sharper and closer. Westerberg's singing, always wanting for clarity, suddenly has it. The guitars cut through when they need to be buzzsaws. And the bass is brought far, far up front—almost sounding louder than the guitar or even Westerberg's voice in places.

Want to hear what it's like to be right in the studio when the Replacements are laying it down? Here it is. And it is truly magnificent. Imagine an album like Abbey Road or Blue getting its sound updated so thoroughly that the original is now practically an afterthought. That's what has happened to Tim.

Despite—or perhaps because of?—the band's reputation, it's doubtful that the Let it Bleed Edition will create a storm of new Replacements fans. Then again, Big Star owed much of its success to the Velvet Underground before it, and Paul Westerberg penned a classic song to his hero and Big Star's lead singer, "Alex Chilton." Maybe someone will pick up Tim—Let It Be Edition, fall in love with that song—every song—and carry on the tradition.