Children By The Millions

I resisted and/or ignored the Replacements for years, and it was mostly because I didn’t have a place for them in my life. There’s a lot of other major canonical acts I came around to sort of late, and I think that’s normal and fine. A nice thing about art is that most of it isn’t going anywhere, and whenever you’re ready for it, it’ll still be there waiting for you. The right moment might come even with music you’ve written off in the past.

I definitely wrote off the Replacements for a long time. They were always sold to me in a way that did not and still does not appeal to me: Messy, debauched fuck-ups with loud, blunt music, like an 80s indie rock Ke$ha. When I was a teen and first exploring the rock canon, this was very unappealing. I was an uptight kid, effectively straight edge into my early 20s, and the idea of a pretty basic rock band whose primary hook was nonstop inebriation did not arouse my interest. Over the years I developed some appreciation for their best known songs, but aside from putting “I Will Dare” on one of my favorite iPod playlists, I never felt inclined to explore their catalog until fairly recently.

Going deeper into the Replacements catalog I found that while that lowlife midwestern party boy vibe is indeed a big part of their deal, there were better reasons to like the band. They may have been legendary for haphazard concerts, but Paul Westerberg’s songs were focused, disciplined things. Like Pavement and Guided by Voices a few years down the line, the Replacements could get away with being loose and sloppy because their songs were so sturdy and tuneful. They had a solid foundation and a singer with a strong voice for rock and roll. Westerberg never sounds like he’s ever trying too hard to sound as soulful as he does on his best songs. He’s a natural.

Here are two of my favorite Replacement songs. The first is glaringly obvious, the second only slightly less so. Maybe you’ve never heard them before. If that is the case, I think you’re in luck.

The Replacements “Alex Chilton”

I was listening to this song and thinking about how easy it is to imagine it arranged and recorded in the style of Spoon. Then I flipped the thought and realized that this song is in a lot of ways a crucial part of the blueprint for Spoon, specifically the vocal phrasing and rhythmic attack on the guitar in the chorus. Maybe the song would sound better if it was recorded in the Spoon style, but I quite like the way the band’s rawness is filtered through a mid-80s production aesthetic. There’s a nice tension in the way the bombastic sound of some elements contrasts with other parts that signal raggedness and intimacy.

“Alex Chilton” is, of course, about Alex Chilton of Big Star. Or really, it’s about being a fan, and imagining an artist as this larger-than-life figure. In Westerberg’s mythology, Chilton isn’t an obscure figure on the fringe of rock history but instead a beloved pop icon on par with the Beatles. It’s a song where the real world doesn’t matter half as much as one man’s personal passion. It’s quite beautiful and sweet, and it serves a great advertisement for Chilton and Big Star. I imagine that quite a few people went out looking for Big Star records after hearing this song. Someone should write a similar tune about Paul Westerberg and call it “Paul Westerberg.”

Buy it from Amazon.

The Replacements “Swingin’ Party”

“Swingin’ Party” is a gorgeous expression of self-loathing. The lyrics are basically a string of self-deprecating one-liners delivered with a wounded sincerity over an arrangement that makes the sentiment seem lovely and romantic in spite of itself. It’s the moment when someone lets their guard down, and makes themselves vulnerable — the mood is sad, but there’s this feeling of possibility. You’re opening up, and that could change your relationship with whomever you’re addressing. It could get more intimate, or it could just get more awkward and strained.

Buy it from Amazon.