REVIEW: Paul Westerberg, Suicaine Gratifaction (Capitol)
- Chris Hill
On Suicaine Gratifaction, his third solo album since the 1990 Replacements swan song, All Shook Down, singer Paul Westerberg resolved to sonically exorcise the ghosts of his past for good. Then, asked by the label to perk up the gentle album he'd fancied completing, Westerberg complied, and what began as an Acapulco cliff swan dive now resembles a jumper changing clothes as he accelerates past the 35th floor: still committed to the course, just not as aesthetically pristine. But any complaints of stylistic schizophrenia arising from the patchwork construction of ballads and rockers are washed away by the heart- baring, honest emotion found throughout the album. Suicaine Gratifaction is the closest thing yet to the soul of the man dogged by the success never achieved, but critically awarded in absentia, to the Replacements.
The gentle acoustic side is bound to alienate more than a few of the hard-line Replacements fans, who don't care to contemplate ex-punk Paul singing a love song duet with Shawn Colvin. The horror! Westerberg's acknowledged that he's a different man now, that the Replacements were made special by the combination of four raw, blazing talents, belonging to a moment in time that can't (and couldn't) be recaptured. He's older, he's wiser, and he's opening himself up for scourging self-examination, hinted at with songs like "Answering Machine" and "Unsatisfied", but never to this extreme.
"I believe I've started to go out of my head", he sings on "Sunrise Always Listens", a spare, beautiful, despairing confessional. If this was the original direction for the album, it makes me yearn for the dark twins of the rocking throwbacks "Lookin' Out Forever" and "Final Hurrah". Choosing to suffer for his art, Westerberg followed a downward spiral during the album's creation, plumbing his emotional depths for songwriting grist. "Sunrise..." explores the nadir of a manic depressive's cycle: the bewildered 2 a.m. feeling where no answers are forthcoming, and an act of nature takes on epiphanic meaning. The song carries the same throat-choking emotion found on Eventually's ode to Bob Stinson, "Good Day".
Westerberg is a master at crafting lyrics rife in double meaning, homonym wordplay ("only when you're chaste/chased, can you ever run fast"), subtle-as-he-wants-to-be sarcasm, and O. Henry ironic twists of phrasing. Missing is his overt humor. He's said, "This is a dark record--you'd be hard pressed to find a joke on it, which might be the greatest departure, because there's always at least one joke on my records, but I don't think this one has one." (The voice of his toddler, wailing 2:36 into "Whatever Makes You Happy" belies this claim, and I swear there's a barking toy dog layered in the middle of "Fugitive Kind". Perhaps these are winks, rather than jokes.)
Self-deprecating, edgy honesty crops up even on the mandated upbeat songs - "I was the last thing that you ever wanted/still the best thing you never had", "Whatever makes you happy/I'm pretty sure isn't me". It's all part of the mirror Westerberg holds up to himself, a process he describes in song: "As the poet drags the darkness/within him to the light/it's only in self-defense". Almost as if he doesn't have a choice, risking his sanity to save it.
Don Was, co-producer with Westerberg, says "It's a rare occasion when you get to make a record that has solidly good writing throughout, where every line has value and there's not a wasted word. I wanted the production to be sonically invisible so that there would be no remnants of the recording process that would get between Paul and the listener." True to his word, the acoustic numbers are given room to breath, echoing edgily, with small flourishes - an English horn on "Self-Defense", an accordion on "It's a Wonderful Lie" - goosing the song without calling attention to themselves.
Maybe that jumper doesn't look so awkward. But next album, I'm hoping he's allowed to go the full distance to expressing that interior darkness. He relates his discoveries with a rare ability that deserves whatever protection can be offered.
