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“What a Day (For a Night)” – Paul Westerberg
(Words/music: Paul Westerberg, available on Come Feel Me Tremble, Vagrant 2003)

Whether deliberate or by destiny, Paul Westerberg became the same sort of cult folk hero as the ones he emulated in his music.  Today, a generation looks at him with the same awe and reverence that he bestowed upon Alex Chilton (or, to a lesser degree, Kiss).  Since the Replacements fizzled out in the 1990s, Westerberg alternated periods of prolific output with prolonged hibernation.  When he put out music – be it the polished power pop in the mid ‘90s, the raw basement recordings for Vagrant early this decade, or the spasmodic internet-only song collages over the last year – it was always unapologetically Westerberg.  After all, it was his distinctive style and sound – simultaneously rough, unpolished, and beautiful – that earned him the same sort of legacy he admired in the first place.

“What a Day (For a Night)” is representative of Westerberg’s basement-folk period.  It sounds hastily mixed and recorded quickly, and it’s not particularly complex.  Still, for all its raggedness, it radiates with Westerberg’s charm.  Whether it’s the wonderful lead guitar melody played a little too loud or the way Westerberg strains his voice as he tests the upper limit of his range, the imperfections never get in the way of his composition.  In fact, these eccentricities feel charming in Westerberg’s hands.  The whole thing sounds like something a friend could have put together on a four track in his basement, or the type of band one might stumble on playing in a small pub on a random weeknight.  However, no matter how close we approach this Westerberg-ian ideal as the King of the Basement, we’re reminded that while we possess the same parts, we don’t know how to assemble them to make the whole thing so effortless and imperfectly beautiful.  This is why people like me get excited every time a new Westerberg song surfaces out of some random hole on the internet, as it might be the next diamond in the rough.

More on Paul Westerberg: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm