After a decade of revelatory archival releases—For Sale’s incendiary live set, the untarnished majesty of Dead Man’s Pop, and the meticulously de-glitzed Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)—it’s tempting to imagine the Replacements’ vaults as infinite. Each year could unearth new treasures, lifting their music out of the ’80s capsule and cementing it in rock’s ageless firmament.
Let It Be, 1984’s masterpiece, is already there. Its title—a wry joke and a dare—encapsulates the band at a crossroads: Paul Westerberg’s songwriting sharpened by experience, the quartet still whole but fraying at the edges. Bob Stinson was slipping into addiction, growing alienated from the band’s drift toward craft and away from the raw, homegrown Midwestern punk of their earlier output. The cover—four dirtbags perched on a roof—signals the band flinging cigarette butts toward the unknown, a soundscape oscillating between adolescent mischief and nascent sophistication.
Where Hootenanny demanded patience through surf-rock and Chubby Checker pastiches, Let It Be makes its throwaways essential. “I Will Dare” gleams with perfection; “Androgynous” is a genderfuck utopia beneath clumsy piano chords. The band’s take on “Black Diamond” obliterates Kiss’s schlock, while the sequence from Nugent-inspired “Gary’s Got a Boner” to the aching “Sixteen Blue” refracts the same character from comic ineptitude to tender vulnerability. Westerberg’s lyrics bristle with idiosyncratic precision—every mumbled syllable, clipped phrase, and improvised filler (“A handful of friend”) pulses with life. The band’s wild impulses sometimes exceed their execution: the stop-start frenzy of “We’re Comin’ Out,” Chris Mars’ unpredictable drum fills, and the raw placeholder verses in “Unsatisfied” all capture a band negotiating newfound emotional breadth.
The Let It Be (Deluxe Edition) is less a rescue than a restoration. Justin Perkins’ remaster subtly shifts the soundstage: Tommy Stinson’s bass snaps forward, Bob and Paul’s guitars intertwine with new clarity, and the siren-like lead on “Seen Your Video” pierces like it should have all along. Bonus tracks from 2008—including T. Rex and Grass Roots covers, “Perfectly Lethal,” and the previously unreleased “Street Girl” and “Who’s Gonna Take Us Alive”—reveal unfinished glories, snapshots of a band at peak ensemble synchronicity. Alternate vocal takes offer glimpses into Westerberg’s lyrical fluidity: a scrapped “Sixteen Blue” verse delivers quintessential Westerberg wit, “Rolling Stone’s as cool as Time/You know, anyway, they waste your time.” Live recordings, meanwhile, are a mostly scholarly delight, with a rare full-band performance of “You’re Getting Married” and early renditions of “Can’t Hardly Wait” hinting at future heights.
Let It Be remains the Replacements’ most complete statement: a delicate equilibrium between the smart and the stupid, the meticulously wrought and the raggedly impromptu. The deluxe boxset confirms how precarious that balance was—replace “Black Diamond,” and the album’s kidding-not-kidding heart shifts; alter a vocal take, and a gag like “Gary’s Got a Boner” tilts toward mere joke. What survives is the unrepeatable magic: songs in this order, teetering on the brink of chaos, alive with the death-drive energy that made the Replacements at once reckless and transcendent. They would climb higher later, but never so close to the ledge.
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