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Friday, December 27, 2024 
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+ Donato Wharton - Body Isolations
+ Svalastog - Woodwork
+ Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
+ Rosy Parlane - Jessamine
+ Jarvis Cocker - The Jarvis Cocker Record
+ Múm - Peel Session
+ Deloris - Ten Lives
+ Minimum Chips - Lady Grey
+ Badly Drawn Boy - Born In The U.K.
+ The Hold Steady - Boys And Girls Together
+ The Blood Brothers - Young Machetes
+ The Places - Songs For Creeps
+ Camille - Le Fil
+ Wolf Eyes - Human Animal
+ Christina Carter - Electrice
+ The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
+ Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
+ Various Artists - Musics In The Margin
+ Rafael Toral - Space
+ Bob Dylan - Modern Times
+ Excepter - Alternation
+ Chris Thile - How To Grow A Woman From The Ground
+ Brad Mehldau - Live in Japan
+ M Ward - Post-War
+ Various Artists - Touch 25
+ The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
+ The White Birch - Come Up For Air
+ Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
+ Coachwhips - Double Death
+ Various Artists - Tibetan And Bhutanese Instrumental And Folk Music, Volume 2
+ Giuseppe Ielasi - Giuseppe Ielasi
+ Cex - Actual Fucking
+ Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
+ Leafcutter John - The Forest And The Sea
+ Carla Bozulich - Evangelista
+ Barbara Morgenstern - The Grass Is Always Greener
+ Robin Guthrie - Continental
+ Peaches - Impeach My Bush
+ Oakley Hall - Second Guessing
+ Klee - Honeysuckle
+ The Court & Spark - Hearts
+ TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
+ Awesome Color - Awesome Color
+ Jenny Wilson - Love And Youth
+ Asobi Seksu - Citrus
+ Marsen Jules - Les Fleurs
+ The Moore Brothers - Murdered By The Moore Brothers
+ Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope
+ The 1900s - Plume Delivery EP
+ Alejandro Escovedo - The Boxing Mirror
+ Function - The Secret Miracle Fountain
+ Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
+ Loscil - Plume
+ Boris - Pink
+ Deadboy And The Elephantmen - We Are Night Sky
+ Glissandro 70 - Glissandro 70
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #2)
+ Calexico - Garden Ruin (Review #1)
+ The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
+ The Glass Family - Sleep Inside This Wheel
+ Various Artists - Songs For Sixty Five Roses
+ The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
+ Motorpsycho - Black Hole/Blank Canvas
+ The Red Krayola - Introduction
+ Metal Hearts - Socialize
+ American Princes - Less And Less
+ Sondre Lerche And The Faces Down Quartet - Duper Sessions
+ Supersilent - 7
+ Band Of Horses - Everything All The Time
+ Dudley Perkins - Expressions
+ Growing - Color Wheel
+ Red Carpet - The Noise Of Red Carpet
+ The Essex Green - Cannibal Sea
+ Espers - II
+ Wilderness - Vessel States

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artist
Paul Westerberg
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Come Feel Me Tremble
Vagrant
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Holy Crap! When did Paul Westerberg turn into Robert Pollard? And why didn't I get the memo? You'd think that there would have at least been an announcement on the Skyway mailing list. You know, something like "Mr. Paul Westerberg would like to announce that he's going to start taking career cues from Robert Pollard, releasing disc after disc consisting mainly of first-take lo-fi home recordings under his own name and at least one pseudonym. Mr. Pollard is reported to be flattered and will continue to base his stage persona on The Replacements."

Ahh, The Replacements. The perfect combination of heart, balls and brains. One of the greatest bands ever. Hanging like a shadow over everything that Paul Westerberg will ever do. It's not fair, really — not to Paul, not to those of us who loved the 'mats with the fury of a thousand white-hot suns and watched them just dissolve under the pressure of being called the greatest rock 'n' roll band of their time while also being called the greatest fuck-ups of their time. Paul put out a series of solo albums that were increasingly long on brains, but short on everything else. Then came last year, and the awesome Stereo/Mono, where the heart and balls took over, and as an extra added bonus, Paul reminded us why he's also one of the greatest rock 'n' roll singers ever.

Released as kind of a companion to a DVD (of his already-legendary-to-Replacements-fans 2002 solo tour) of the same name, Come Feel Me Tremble is a bit of a mess, like they stuck the disc on a wall and threw the songs at it. (For those of you living in the Bay Area, it's kind of like the way the post-fire houses in the Oakland hills look as if they were just randomly tossed onto the hillside.) But you could say the same thing for Hootenanny, and to me this captures a bit of the same magic. As in that classic, while the songs don't really hang well together, they certainly hang well separately. And I certainly prefer this approach to his approach during the 1990s, when he didn't record many albums and put too much thought into each one. I think that Paul is at his best when he leads with his guts and doesn't overthink what he's doing.

As always, I gravitate to some of the riff-rockers like "Making Me Go," "My Daydream" and fuzzed-out Stonesy death trip "Pine Box," but note that, as per usual, there are a couple of downtempo numbers that work as well — the aching "Meet Me Down in the Alley," and the plaintive "What a Day (For a Night)." And his cover of Jackson Browne's "These Days" is just exquisite. I also love the two new additions to all of his great pills & booze songs — the inadvertant Rush Limbaugh anthem "Hillbilly Junk" ("Gonna get higher/ On that hillbilly junk"), and "Knockin' Em Back" ("I'm drinking once again/ Just to make them pills kick in"), which features a sly Dylan reference on the chorus.

Finally, there are two versions of the Sylvia Plath-quoting "Crackle & Drag," a sad, hauntingly melodic version, and a screamy vocal rocking original take, which barely sounds like the same song but has been waking me up in the middle of the night ringing in my head.

None of this is as life-saving as The Replacements once were, but a couple of decades down the road, I don't need my life saved by music anymore. All I need is new records to affirm how much music still means to me. New records like this one.


by Jim Connelly




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