During the last act of
the Replacements
,
Tommy Stinson
sat patiently beside
Paul Westerberg
as
the Mats
' lead singer/songwriter attempted to extricate himself from the band's drunken legend. By the time of their 1990 farewell,
All Shook Down
were barely rocking anymore, so it's little wonder that when he struck out with his own band
Bash & Pop
in 1993, he was ready to kick up some dust. That's precisely what he did on
Friday Night Is Killing Me
, the 1993 debut from
. Filled with openhearted rockers recalling
the Faces
and punctuated by a couple of ramshackle ballads that only underscore the debt to
Rod Stewart
is the kind of casual music that gets better with age, possibly because it is so beholden to tradition it winds up standing outside of time. At the time of its release,
didn't belong to any of the current trends in alternative rock; it was too beholden to boogie and good times, standing in contrast to the alt-angst and obtuse indie in the American underground. Decades after its release, the album feels like a bit of the hangover from the '80s, a celebration of irreverent roots rock performed with an audible grin.
are certainly slicker than prime
Replacements
, but that's because
Stinson
recorded a good chunk of the record on his own, bringing in friends from
Tom Petty's Heartbreakers
and
Wire Train
's
Jeff Trott
to fill out the sound. If the resulting record is a bit slick, it's also full of heart, and
's songs are sturdy, old-fashioned guitar rave-ups that make no apologies to their debt to
Ronnie Wood
Ronnie Lane
, and
Westerberg
, too ("Fast and Hard" is the closest
comes to a straight-out
Mats
roar). Maybe
is minor, but that's also the charming thing about it: it's the sound of a musician getting back to what he loves to do, and that's quite endearing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine