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Tim

The Replacements - Tim Audio CD

A fair review of the The Replacements "Tim" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Replacements reviews here, or go back to the The Replacements tabs.

Band: The Replacements
Title: Tim
Rating:

Release Date: 1990-10-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Hold My Life 2: I'll Buy 3: Kiss Me on the Bus 4: Dose of Thunder 5: Waitress in the Sky 6: Swingin Party 7: Bastards of Young 8: Lay It Down Clown 9: Left of the Dial 10: Little Mascara 11: Here Comes a Regular

C-L-A-S-S-I-C
Can't recommend this album any higher. Right after Let it Be, Tim is the Replacements'quintessential album and deserves its own spot among "the best".

amazing
So incredibly thought provoking. Each time I listen to this album, I find myself listening harder and harder to Westerberg's lyrics. This album has long been one of my favorites and will never cease to be so.

Tim
It is difficult because The music is phenomenol in some places and dissapointing in other parts. The Replacements-Tim ****

Tim is the most difficult Replacements album. The production works perfectly in some parts and then in others is a complete annoyance. Tommy Ramone, the original drummer for the Ramones, or as he later went by his given name, Tommy Erdelyi was the producer of Tim. That is the biggest flaw to the album. Sometimes it sounds flat, especially the guitar, it just sounds weak. 'I'll Buy' would have been amazing had the guitar been louder and more present. Paul Westerbergs vocals are sometimes hardly auidible which is not exceptable especially concidering the calliber of his lyrics. Tim contains some of Westerbergs all time best lyrics. As before mentioned the guitar is weak in comparison to previous albums, which is understandable being as Bob Stinson was incredibly drugged out during this period left the band shortly after because of it. However that doesn't excuse Westerbergs guitar from sounding like that as he too is a great guitar player. Younger brother Tommy Stinsons bass is the most present instrument on the album which is odd concidering that usually bass is not that loud. Christopher Mars' drumming souds dull and distant which sucks because he is often the driving force behind the songs giving them a danceable feel.

'Hold My Life' 'Ill Buy' 'Bastards Of Young' 'Little Mascara' and 'Here Comes A Regular' are some of the very best written songs Westerberg ever wrote. 'Little Mascara' is simply divine. A fantastic song. 'Bastards Of Young' is just breath taking. Jesse Malin covered this on his Glitter In The Gutter album and did it perfefct. The only problem is that these songs are too serious, and not that it is a problem persay, but this album seems to have lost the since of humor that they once had with songs like 'Garys Got A Boner' and 'Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out. ' Humor is something the band always had on the stage and in the studio but they seem to have started taking themselves way too serious here, more so Westerberg then anyone else. However 'Waitress In The Sky' is full of humor and is a very true song at that same time. It is about how everyone feels flying in coach and being treated bad by the flight attendants because you are not in first class, when really the attandants are nothing more then waitress in the sky.

So overall this is a solid album that could have been better had the drug circumstances with drugs, the production and the band as a whole been better but for the cards they held at the time I think for the final Replacements album of the original lineup they did a pretty good job.

Piling On
Bought Tim a couple years ago, hadn't listened to it for some time, so took it along on a car trip to New England this week. I missed the Replacements entirely when they were extant, probably because I was mostly out of the country in their working years. And indeed, they did have it all -- brash, messy, hooks in every song, and funny. But all that is really a brave but futile front against the nihilism that haunts some of their best work -- Swinging Party and the amazing Here Comes a Regular with its bar-sotted turn of a season and (down)turn of a life. So in the overwhelming face of that emptiness, what to do aside from drink? Get mad and funny, Waitress in the Sky (my guess is she cut him off at six drinks or so on a two hour flight), celebrate the radio noise, Left of the Dial, and produce some great radio noise of your own, Little Mascara and Kiss Me on the Bus.

Great stuff, period. .

"Give my regards to Boston" (* * * * 1/2)
Fortunately, it makes up for that by erasing the odious filler that marred the previous year's album. The Replacement's 1985 release Tim lacks some of the muscle of 1984's Let It Be. Yes, there are some weaker tracks on Tim, but they are not rubbish of the sort that reared its ugly head before. Interestingly, even though it was produced by a member of The Ramones (Tommy Erdelyi), Tim shows fewer elements of punk than the band's albums had to this point. Lyrically, Paul Westerberg reflected more on being the young adult that he actually was, rather than on the teenager that he had been.

Although Tim never rocks as hard as it predecessor, it maintains the same dynamic of rock songs interspersed with ballads. The record hits the ground running with the confident rocker "Hold My Life", and the pace is kept up for the first half of the record. The best song among these first five tracks is "Kiss Me On the Bus", an ornery advance to a female passenger whose admirer who may or may not be secret. The first half also includes the closest thing to filler on the record, "Waitress In the Sky". This is an okay song to singalong to, but I don't understand why being a waitress - on an airplane or in a restaurant - is a bad thing. And do flight attendants ever claim to be anything more important than they actually are? (I am guessing that Westerberg wrote this song after a bad flight. )

"Swingin' Party" divides the disc down the middle. This melancholy ballad is about two people - not necessarily a couple - who are outcasts, whether they are around other people or just one another. But however lonely they may be, they always have each other. Again, Westerberg paints a vivid picture of a desolate Midwestern town, where there is little for the young loner to latch onto. "Left of the Dial" is a musically crisp and lyrically earnest valentine to underground radio, and maybe even to a particular female artist whom he heard on one of those stations. The album's closer, "Here Comes A Regular", is Tim's "Androgynous". This is one of Westerberg's best songs, ballads or otherwise. "A person can work up a mean, mean thirst/After a hard day of nothin' much at all" introduces the song's narrator as someone who has only his nightly trip to the watering hole to look forward to each day. Is he actually thirsty? Yes, but more for somewhere to go and someone to talk to rather than for alcohol. For all the goofy, sloppy rock songs that Westerberg writes, it is songs like this one that demonstrate his worthiness of being treated as a serious songwriter.

Speaking of goofy, sloppy rock songs, there is no shortage of them on Tim. Not surprisingly, these are the tracks on which Bob Stinson's guitar shines through the most brightly. Among these are "I'll Buy", "Dose of Thunder", and "Lay It Down Clown". But the best of these rockers is "Bastards of Young", which isn't really goofy or sloppy at all. In fact, it is as anthemic as the clarion call opening riff suggests it is. This is not a teenage anthem, but a twenty-something anthem, with its references to "the ladder of success", "graduat[ing] unskilled", and "income tax deduction". It seems that Westerberg dares skeptics to write him off with songs like the three above, only force them to reconsider with ones like this one, as well as "Kiss Me On the Bus" and "Here Comes A Regular".

Let It Be and Tim, taken together, secured The Replacements a spot among the pantheon of great American indie rock bands. 1987's Pleased To Meet Me continued their winning streak, but would be the last in a trio of great albums. Fans and critics can argue over which of these albums was actually their best, but I think that they would all agree that Tim was their most consistent collection, even if the best songs on Let It Be were better than the best ones on Tim.
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You can see a complete list of all The Replacements discography, or go back to the The Replacements tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.