ALL SHOOK DOWN
Now, the transformation complete, Westerberg’s signature is his wiseass copping to the selling of his soul–he’s half-embarrassed by it, but he gets a new kind of thrill out of the process as well: “They put a checkbook to my head,” he smirks on the Replacements’ new album, All Shook Down. I can’t think of anyone who has so gleefully tracked the progress of his own debauching. The band’s last album, the ironically titled AOR breakthrough Don’t Tell a Soul, had a heady reflexiveness in songs like “Talent Show” (“We ain’t much to look at so / Close your eyes and here we go”); All Shook Down brazenly continues this tradition in razzle-dazzle fashion–it’s the cleanest and poppiest Replacements album yet, with more than its share of nifty radio blasters, a selection of songwriterly cream puffs for the English majors, and subtext aplenty for the critics. It’s also the wimpiest, which is a problem; but most of all, it’s the most resonant commentary we’ve yet seen on the aging of the postpunk rock ‘n’ roll zeitgeist.
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Westerberg and the Replacements grew up proudly under the twin influences of unpretentious 70s hard rock (Aerosmith and Kiss) and the punks. From the latter, they learned contempt for the record business–it’s important to remember that the Replacements came from that first generation of rock-and-rollers for whom the quest for popular success was not a given; to them, the gradual change to playing the game, making those radio-friendly records and playing the part of rock star, was a difficult move to make, in terms of both personal philosophy and peer pressure. Westerberg’s the group’s leader and songwriter, but bassist Tommy Stinson is the residual bearer of the band’s thrashy soul and a vocal critic of Westerberg’s wimpier moments. Playing the game to become famous may seem inevitable, even routine, to us–we don’t think about the implications of it much, but we instinctively wish fame and fortune on the artists we like–but for the Replacements, and particularly for Westerberg, who’s going through most of the changes, and in public no less, it’s scary ground.
The crack is a rare lapse on Westerberg’s part, and a telling glimpse at some underlying tensions; he makes a lot of jokes about it, but he’s probably not sure if he’s doing the right thing–you always get the feeling he thinks there’s a bunch of people out there ready to yell “Sellout!” at him. It’s kind of sad, for a couple of reasons; to the extent that the issue exists at all, it’s limited to some of the rougher fanzines, and so what. But there’s another issue as well, one that I like to call, rather dopily, the Springsteen factor.
and growing old in a bar
All Shook Down, while it strives toward the consistency of Don’t Tell a Soul, gets mired down in junk. “Attitude” is a bland tune that seems to start out being about alcoholism but then ratchets over to being one of those boy-was-I-a-goof-when-I-was-growing-up songs. (Next to Springsteen’s “Growin’ Up,” it’s even blander.) “Sadly Beautiful” makes “Achin’ to Be” look like Leonard Cohen, and John Cale playing viola on it just makes it worse. (I thought seriousness moves like that went out with Moog synthesizers.) “Torture” is almost a bleat. All of these songs, too, suffer from a terribly misconceived abandonment of the band’s musical attack; if Westerberg keeps this up he’s going to be pressing the flesh with Kenny Rogers on the American Music Awards before we know it.
