After the run of momentous archival Replacements releases over the past decade—the world-burning live set on For Sale, the miraculous de-glitzing of their late-’80s material on Dead Man’s Pop, the peak of their achievement liberated from tinny production on Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)—it’s tempting to imagine that the vaults of whatever garage they run Mats HQ out of might be infinitely deep. Each year could bring new treasures, lifting the Replacements’ music out of the cellophane realm of “the ’80s” and placing it once and for all in rock’s timeless firmament.
Their 1984 masterpiece Let It Be—a joke title, but also a boast, a dare—is already in that firmament. It is the band’s most celebrated record, the one where they trained their homegrown Midwestern punk sensibilities on Paul Westerberg’s most mature songs yet, creating in the process an enduring template for what would come to be called indie rock. It captured the band on the precipice of a major transition. They didn't know at the time, but it would be their last record on the local Twin/Tone label before signing with Sire, distributed by Warner. It would also effectively conclude their run as a democratic quartet, as madcap guitarist Bob Stinson drifted into addiction and became disillusioned with the band’s evolution from the hard and fast into the songwriterly and craftsmanlike. In 1984, there was a sense that the Replacements were destined for something beyond the basement rehearsal space and the sub-two-minute punk song. Let It Be, with its cover photo of four dirtbags on a roof, is the sound of the band flicking down cigarette butts toward whatever lay beyond, sounding its depths.
The Mats’ previous album, Hootenanny, dared listeners to sit through a bunch of abortive pastiches (hardcore, surf rock, Chubby Checker) in order to get to a few transcendently good songs. On Let It Be, the throwaways are essential. Yes, “I Will Dare” is flawless, and the genderfuck utopia of “Androgynous” shimmers behind Westerberg’s clumsy piano chords. But the band also plays “Black Diamond,” a Kiss cover, with a commitment so total that it vaporizes the schlock of the original. And has there ever been a more inspired feat of sequencing than following the Ted Nugent rip-off “Gary’s Got a Boner” with the aching “Sixteen Blue”? The songs tap the same source; they give us a comic view of a sexually inept young man and then a tender view of what could be the same character. “You’re looking funny/You ain’t laughing, are you,” Westerberg howls, before launching into a guitar solo filled with weeping feedback.
These are coming-of-age songs played by a band still in the process of finding a sound that could stand up to their newly expanded emotional palate—not just snot-nosed defiance and fun, but also hope and world-weary concern. Some of the best moments happen when the wild creative impulse exceeds the band’s ability or willingness to execute: the lurching stop-start in the middle of the ferocious “We’re Comin’ Out,” later overdubbed with loungey piano and finger snaps; Chris Mars’ wicked drum fill at the end of “Favorite Thing,” which threatens for a second to turn the beat around, only to improbably stick the landing; the mumbled placeholder verses in the otherwise majestic “Unsatisfied.” Westerberg is an all-time great interpreter of lyrics; he always sounds like he has more ideas in his head than he has air in his lungs. A lyric in “Answering Machine” that has been rendered in writing as “I’ve got a handful of friends” in fact sounds more clipped, something like “A handful of friend.” As he sings earlier in that song, “You know what I mean.”
Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) is not a rescue mission. It is a work of thoughtful, incremental maintenance. Justin Perkins’s remaster is subtle but significant. Guitar tracks now poke out of the murk: the metallic thwack of Tommy Stinson’s bass, Bob and Paul’s intertwining rhythms. The siren-like lead on “Seen Your Video” is now especially, appropriately piercing. The bonus tracks from the album’s 2008 re-release—goofy Grass Roots and T. Rex covers, plus “Perfectly Lethal,” a melodic rocker with a call-and-response chorus—are joined by two original songs that have yet to appear on an official release: the two-step throwaway “Street Girl,” and the blistering “Who’s Gonna Take Us Alive.” These are minor, more or less unfinished songs that still illustrate how powerful the band’s ensemble playing could be when they decided to make an effort. There are also alternate vocal takes for four album cuts, notable both for the new mixes and the glimpse they provide into the fluidity of Westerberg’s lyrics from take to take. (One axed “Sixteen Blue” verse features an especially Westerbergian crack: “Rolling Stone’s as cool as Time/You know, anyway, they waste your time.”)
The value of the live recordings—one full 1984 show from an audience tape, plus selections from another on a bonus 10"—is mostly scholarly. (For the true Mats obsessive, the set on the 10" includes a rare full-band performance of the Westerberg ballad “You’re Getting Married,” a song that occasioned this comment from Bob Stinson: “Save it for your solo record, Paul.”) The full set kicks off with one of the earliest known performances of “Can’t Hardly Wait,” which wouldn’t find its way onto a studio record until 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me. The Replacements shows of this era were famous for being either transcendent or trainwrecks; this one is mostly straight down the middle. Nothing sinks to the debased lows of The Shit Hits the Fans, the “official bootleg” documenting the final show of the same tour, but nothing rises to its heights either—except for a cover of the Vertebrats’ “Left in the Dark,” a new-wave curiosity that the band attacks with pulverizing force.
Westerberg has called Let It Be “the most complete record we ever made.” By this, he meant that it strikes a perfect balance between the smart and the stupid, the well-wrought and the slapdash. We can now see just how delicate that balance was. Another cover in the place of “Black Diamond” would have cut out the album’s kidding-not-kidding heart. With a different vocal take, “Gary’s Got a Boner” would have been more gag than song. Even the addition of a genuinely great track like “Perfectly Lethal” would have altered the atmosphere of everything around it, introducing a touch too much craft. What this box set leaves you with is a sense of the unrepeatable magic of these songs, in this order—and the death-drive energy they gather from skirting the edge of collapse. The Replacements would climb higher, but never again would they come this close to the ledge.
