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The Replacements

Let It Be

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by HomicidalCarrot on 11/02/2007

Often considered to be one of the best and most influential college rock albums of the 80's, Let It Be is far from perfect. The silly throwaway tracks "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" are filler, and songs such as "We're Comin Out" and "Seen Your Video" although bratty and raw, are rather slight. Still, as a balance between the raunchy rockers of early 'Mats records and the more introspective, restrained tunes singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg would later prefer, Let It Be has no peers. The opening song "I Will Dare" was their first significant college radio "hit", with a bouncy beat and a jangly pop sound that contrasted with Westerberg's scratchy, off key voice. The next song, "Favorite Thing" is like a 70's pop hit if it was covered in whiskey, turned inside out and had the amps cranked up to a distortion heavy 11. It's a fabulous song that is rarely mentioned among the 'Mats' finest. After a couple of mildly amusing aforementioned filler tunes, the surprisingly mature and understated piano based "Androgynous" emerges. After a raw, surprisingly good take on Kiss's Black Diamond, what may be The Replacements and Paul Westerberg's best song ever follows. On paper, "Unsatisfied" sounds simple. The song consists of relatively few lyrics, and is mostly acoustic based. But the lovesick, half screaming vocal of Westerberg so convincingly telling his lack of satisfaction and the soaring guitar elevates the song to indie rock legend. Unlike the Rolling Stones snotty, cheeky rocking "Satisfaction", Westerberg's deliverly and lyrics are lonely, ravaged and fragile as hell. "Sixteen Blue" is a dead on portrayal of the most frustrating period of life, adolescence. The song, written as a tribute to the Replacements' teenage bassist Tommy Stinson, contains such timeless lyrics as "your age is the hardest age, everything drags and drags" and "you're looking funny, you ain't laughing are you?" The album ends with Paul Westerberg alone with a distorted Fender, half screaming in his "woe is me" voice in "Answering Machine" in which he curses his girlfriend's answering machine, and cries out in agony when he can't talk to her face to face, er, voice to voice. This song could be described as "Proto-Emo" but Westerberg's vocal and lyrics are much more effective than the whiny, wimpy high school diary musings of the average modern emo band. Overall, despite its flaws, Let It Be is a modern classic, full of drunken rockers, tortured ballads, and most surprisingly, a Kiss cover that actually works.

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Tracklist

1	I Will Dare
2	Favorite Thing
3	We're Comin' Out
4	Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
5	Anadrogynous
6	Black Diamond
7	Unsatisfied
8	Seen Your Video
9	Gary's Got A Boner
10	Sixteen Blue
11	Answering Machine

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