Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 09/23/2008
All things considered,
Tim was an easy transition to the majors for
the Replacements, at least as far as the making of the album goes: things went wrong
after the release, as the band botched big showcases like its
Saturday Night Live spot, leading up to the dismissal of
Bob Stinson at the conclusion of the
Tim tour. The dust hadn't settled when
the 'Mats headed down to Memphis to record
Pleased to Meet Me with producer
Jim Dickinson at
Ardent Studios -- or to phrase it in
Alex Chilton-speak, to record with
Big Star's
3rd producer at the studio where all three
Big Star albums were made. All this fanboy worship perhaps naturally led to a full-blown mash note to
Paul Westerberg's idol, who also turned up to play a couple of licks on a finally finished
"Can't Hardly Wait," which initially was attempted with
Chilton as a producer before
Tim, but
Pleased to Meet Me didn't resemble either the crystalline pop of
#1 Record or the narcissistic black hole of
3rd.
Dickinson gave
the Replacements a full-blooded, muscular production, cranking up guitars, hauling out an upright bass for
Tommy Stinson, and bringing in horns -- even strings -- to flesh out
Westerberg's songs. This was
the Replacements as professionals and, ever the contrarians, they strained against it -- albeit only sporadically and underneath the surface -- with
Westerberg's outsider stance calcifying into the invigorating bitterness of
"I.O.U." and
"I Don't Know." These two proto-slacker anti-anthems -- quite the inverse of the call to arms of
"Bastards of Young" and
"Left of the Dial" -- are the only times the group's self-sabotage surfaces here, as the bandmembers pretty much give themselves over to
Dickinson's studio savvy, leading to the ominous pulse of
"The Ledge" and the brilliant, shining power pop of
"Never Mind," "Alex Chilton," and
"Valentine," along with such left-field twists as the mock jazz of
"Nightclub Jitters." This kind of colorful, almost cinematic production -- even the greasy rocker
"Shooting Dirty Pool" is enhanced by the sound of breaking glass -- was unheard of on a
Replacements record and it all came to a head on
"Can't Hardly Wait," which was glossed over with swelling strings and
the Memphis Horns.
All these fancy accoutrements would seem like the antithesis of
the Replacements' spirit, but
Dickinson's grand production merely blows
the 'Mats up to epic scale, leaving their essence intact:
Westerberg even gets a lovely fragile acoustic moment in
"Skyway" and there are down-and-dirty rockers like
"Shooting Dirty Pool" and
"Red Red Wine" that feel like throwaways, but are necessary to the spirit of the record.
The Replacements never sounded better with a bigger production than they did on
Pleased to Meet Me, so it's hard not to see it as the one that got away, the record that
should have been the breakthrough, especially in the year when fellow American underground rockers
R.E.M. leaped into the Top Ten (but, it's also true that
"The Ledge" may not have been the best single choice, as songs about suicides don't often provide entry into the Top 40). Then again,
the Replacements don't make sense as a success story, so the failure of the gleaming, glistening
Pleased to Meet Me winds up making its polish kind of heart-rending. As it turns out, this was the last time they could still shoot for the stars and seem like their scrappy selves and, in many ways, it was the last true
Replacements album. [
Rhino's 2008 deluxe reissue of
Pleased to Meet Me has a wealth of 11 bonus tracks, almost all of them excellent. First, there is a quartet of studio demos recorded just after
Bob Stinson was let go:
"Birthday Gal," a somewhat brokenhearted love song whose chorus later partially resurfaced on
"Merry Go Round"; an early version of
"Valentine," containing a bridge that was excised from the finished version; the terrific
"Bundle Up," which harks back to early-'60s novelty rockers; and finally,
"Photo," an urgent, romantic rocker that deserved to go further than a demo. Then there are the three B-sides to
"The Ledge": the slow heavy blues
"Election Day" and a run-through of
"Route 66" eclipsed by a careening
"Tossin' n' Turnin'." There are two alternate takes -- a slightly rougher
"Alex Chilton" and another version of
"Can't Hardly Wait" with no overdubs and slightly different lyrics -- and a demo of the sprightly unreleased pop tune
"Kick It In." Finally, there's a pleasantly ambling version of
"Cool Water," the first
Chris Mars lead vocal that was originally released as the B-side of
"Can't Hardly Wait."]
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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