Album: Paul Westerberg

Stereo/Mono, Vagrant/B-Unique

The latest offering from the former Replacements songwriter comprises two CDs, roughly corresponding to the two phases of his career. The first is a largely acoustic set of typically self-deprecating reflections on life, work and love, while the second features a bunch of short and not-so-sweet rowdy rockers with all the swagger of classic Replacements performances. Binding them together is Westerberg's gift for ennobling the lives of the lost, the louche and the left-behind in songs that seem like old friends the first time you hear them. He's the kind of writer for whom words and phrases just seem to fall naturally into place. "In between love and like, you and me are alive"; "Nothing to no one/ I'm just a button to sew on"; and perhaps most striking of all, the lines that open the albumwith a bittersweet tang of self-loathing, "Baby learns to crawl/ Watching daddy's skin". Recorded quickly, mostly in the middle of the night "with sweaty hands and unsure reason", there are no attempts to embellish the initial bursts of inspiration with pointless overdubs, or even clean up the bum notes and badly tuned guitars – indeed, in some cases, the tape runs out abruptly before the track ends. Instead, the songs are allowed to live on their own terms, rather than succumb to external values, and are all the more powerful for it.