Paul Westerberg - Folker
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CD Details
Artist: Paul WesterbergEdition: Music CD
Audio: German (Unknown); German (Published)
CD Release Date: 2004-09-07
Music Label: Vagrant Records
Soundtracks:
- Jingle
- When Will We Arrive?
- My Dad
- Looking Up In Heaven
- Anyway's All Right
- $100 Groom
- 23 Years Ago
- As Far As I Know
- What About Mine?
- How Can You Like Him?
- New Life
- Gun Shy
- Folk Star
Music reviews of Folker
Music Review: Possibly Westerberg's Best Yet.
Rating: 4 Stars
Possibly Westerberg's best yet.
When you strip away whatever youthful nostalgia you might associate with older works from the Replacements, and measure things up track by track, this album takes second place to none. Some of its songs could secretly wedge themselves into older works and never sound out of place.
Folker vaults Paul from the netherworld between youthful angst and middle age reflection. True, there are some retrospective ballads on Folker, but there is, nevertheless, a gratitude and humility in Folker, and a sincerity that comes from a man who has finally shaken off the past and settled into the present. For its quality and deftness, this album floats on a plane above all of his recent work.
For those who found Grandpa Boy a bit thin and half-hearted, with its bare-cupboard home studio sound and distracted themes, this album will please. Its production values are robust and rich, but not overdone. It is well balanced, with none of the aging-star desperation that seemed to undergird All Shook Down; remember how techy and awkward and forced much of that sounded compared to the authentic and moving Let it Be and Tim?
Folker brings at least five tracks that in and of themselves justify the silica that gave their lives for this disc. Below is a list of Folker's tracks. See asterisks for the album's best tracks.*
1) Jingle - A sarcastic, Beatlesque song-as-tuning-fork.
2) *Now I Wonder - Vague, forgivably overwrought, spiritual, and moving.
3) *My Dad - A clever and surreptitiously sentimental love song to his ailing father.
4) *Lookin' Up In Heaven - A spacious, rhythmic, tireless and nostalgic paean for love lost.
5) *Anyway's All Right - Painted from the everwet pallet of the romantic Replacements artiste, this rolling ballad has an hypnotic attenuation to it. Truly beautiful with its haunting harmonies. The album's best track.
6) $100.00 Groom - Paul flaunting his reckless metre
7) 23 Years Ago - an unremarkable interregnum between good songs on either side of it.
8) *As Far As I Know - The Monkeys, had they been talented. An anthemic pop song, and a tuneful diagnosis for the FHM generation.
9) What About Mine? Fills the last 50 meg of a 700 meg CD.
10) How Can You Like Him? Dissonance tamed, in a way only Paul can.
11) Breathe Some New Life - Second half of song could be good; I wouldn't know.
12) Gun Shy - Coherent, yet unremarkable and blandly enumerative.
13) Folk Star - Rhymes with "plastic red guitar" ... a deliberately shallow self-parody of Paul's emerging rep as a Folker.
One professional reviewer has declared that Folker embarrasses everything around it, and you know what? That is about right. Paul Westerberg set the bar pretty high for himself a long time ago, and he has hurdled it again.
I got a chance to see him in concert in February of this year (2005) at the Showbox in Seattle, and he was better than ever. Paul is not solo on this tour; he is backed with a full band. He sounded clear and strong. Much better than during his Seattle concert for the release of Grandpa Boy a couple years back. I honestly think his range is better than when he was in his twenties. This recent concert was two hours of uninterrupted High Folkage, with a four minute break in the middle. You gotta love that kind of focus in today's music world.
Obviously, Folker is a must-buy for 'Mats or Westerberg fans.
Thanks to my brother Mikey who sprang for the CD, so I could hear it from start to finish.
Liam Pierce
Description of Folker
With the success of previous records "Come Feel Me Tremble" and "Stereo/Mono", Westerberg is back with a new full length studio album. "Folker" contains 13 brand new songs Paul produced and recorded in his basement in Minnesota. This album is a continuation of the prolific songwriting that has made him one of the most influential artists of his generation.Paul Westerberg's solo work has never exactly measured up to the life-changing music he made with the the Replacements. But it seems like that's more of a problem for everyone else than him. Folker is the fifth full-length album he has recorded in his basement--counting the ones produced by his slightly more mischievous alter ego Grandpaboy--and easily the most relaxed. The lyrics seem largely tossed off, the instruments sound like they're competing with the hum of the heater, and Westerberg sings in the gruff voice of someone who's just rolled out of bed. Under the right circumstances these are all endearing qualities, to be sure (see: Damien Rice's O), although more discerning fans might find that bluesy dirges like "When Will We Arrive?" and "As Far As I Know" signal a slight lack of direction. --Aidin Vaziri
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