Don't Tell A Soul

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Don’t Tell A Soul has been unfairly maligned by Replacements fans. Even though the album was clearly the beginning of the end for one of the best bands of the Eighties, Don’t Tell A Soul is as poignant as anything the ‘Mats ever recorded. The band had lost founding member Bob Stinson — the loose cannon guitarist who provided the group its unhinged, fiery edge — and they had all grown up a lot in the ten years since the band started. To the dismay of many fans reared on the bittersweet pop tantrums of Sorry Ma and Let It Be, Paul Westerberg’s teenage furor had given way to regret and middle-aged uncertainty. Though Don’t Tell A Soul doesn’t deliver an anthem on the order of “Bastards of Young,” it still contains some of Westerberg’s most devastating lines. “Well it's the biggest thing in my life I guess / Look at us all, we're nervous wrecks,” he admits on “Talent Show,” now sounding as unsure about his career in rock’n’roll as he once was of asking girls out. The album doesn’t burn with the shambolic camaraderie of the Bob Stinson years, but its best moments (the desperate “Anywhere is Better Than Here,” the college radio hit “I’ll Be You”) retain the sweet-but-raw-nerved touch that could only come from the Replacements.

via Apple Music

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