The Flawed Glory of the Replacements’ <em>Don’t Tell a Soul</em>
In 1989, the band reached for the mainstream with its sixth album. Thirty years later, the record’s stab at timelessness ironically makes it sound dated.
The legendary alt-rock group the Replacements was formed in 1979 as a ramshackle outfit led by a smart-ass Minneapolis janitor named Paul Westerberg. At the time, punk was the least commercial music you could make, with the movement’s biggest acts, such as the Ramones and The Clash, beginning to embrace more conventional rock sounds. Minneapolis felt as far as you could get, culturally speaking, from the punk hotbeds of New York and London. The odds seemed so stacked against Westerberg and crew that they assumed an us-against-the-world stance that often toppled into self-sabotage.
Throughout the ’80s, the Replacements always seemed like they were about to implode. Their members melted down in miasmas of drugs and alcohol. Their records.
