Audio CD review:
Paul Westerberg - Come Feel Me Tremble

Paul Westerberg - Come Feel Me Tremble

Band: Paul Westerberg Title: Come Feel Me Tremble Rating: Release Date: 2003-10-21 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Dirty Diesel 2: Making Me Go 3: Hillbilly Junk 4: Soldier Of Misfortune 5: My Daydream 6: What A Day (For A Night) 7: Wild & Lethal 8: Crackle And Drag (Original take) 9: Crackle And Drag (Alt Version) 10: Never Felt Like This Before 11: Knockin' Em Back 12: Pine Box 13: Meet Me Down The Alley 14: These Days

Not that shaky (but still pretty good) On the album cover, that title appears beside a picture of a wreckless Paul looking like he's given up trying to put himself together and instead has let himself go. Come Feel Me Tremble is the wrong title for this cd, and this miscalculation on the choice of title phrases doesn't bode well for an album that has its fair share of beautifully guttery rock n' roll. And this combination of words and picture would seem to indicate that listening to the album would shed some light about a soul who's on the verge of a breakdown because he's too real of a person to live in a phony-filled world, or something desperate along those lines, which would ring true. And though there is some great rock n' roll to be had here (from time to time), it's not the place to go if you're looking for 'desperate. ' Songs like 'Making Me Go,' and song 7 (can't remember title) are good rock n' roll songs that includes tinges of expressionistic achiness but are for the most part pretty straight-ahead rock numbers. Intermingled with pretty good songs like these is a bunch of adult-sounding boredom that comes across about as rascally and loose as doing your homework. Some of these songs, including the cover of 'These Days' (And I love the original), seem to be most listenable while staring at your plate of eggs and bacon, with your lover sitting across from you at a diner, both feeling too stale on this particular Saturday morning to escape the absorption of the self-conscious mind to dig into those eggs! Despite too much seriousness and poetry and not enough shakiness and pill-popping, this album includes a couple of gems, 'Hillbilly Junk' and 'Pine Box. ' I could listen to this lazy, raucous, and sensitive 'Junk' about a thousand times in a row. And though 'Pine Box' has a searing political message, it trembles pretty vivaciously and did get me thinking that an actual nervous breakdown may be around the corner. . Rough, but excellent But if you take it too far, you stop gaining authenticity and honesty and just start coming off as needlessly sloppy and uninterested in giving the songs what they deserve. Rejecting studio glossiness in favor of being authentic and honest is all well and good in theory. On this album, Westerberg threatens to drive all the way over the cliff into sonic garbageland, then thinks better of it and jumps out of the car seconds before it plunges downward. Although he would probably benefit from a little editing and polishing here and there, the roughness of Westerberg's execution generally enhances the songs (particularly lonesome shouts from the wilderness like "Meet Me Down The Alley"). Heck, I have even grown to view his clumsy drumming as rather charming. There's a lot to love here. "What A Day (For A Night)" sparkles with its sharp lead guitar. "My Daydream" has a winning melody. "Wild & Lethal" swaggers nicely. And the Jackson Browne cover "These Days" is a thoughtful way to close out the proceedings. Of the two versions of "Crackle & Drag," I'm going to have to cast my vote wholeheartedly for the alternate take. The original version is a little too uptempo and forceful for a meditation on suicide. "Pine Box" would have been twice as good if it were half as long. And "Never Felt Like This Before" is so pretty that I wish it were twice as long. It's mildly irritating that the track listing on the back of my CD does not actually match the order on the actual album ("Hillbilly Junk" is listed at No. 3 but is, in fact, the No. 9 song). And, while I'm on the subject of the packaging, all of the pictures are substandard, like they were taken with some wretched cell-phone camera. Fortunately, none of this takes away from the high quality of the songs inside. . Another winning album from Paul However, the songwriting here seems more focused, so I like this one better. Much like the simultaneously released "Dead Man Shake", this album is loose and Paul is just letting it flow. The two takes of "Crackle & Drag" (about Sylvia Plath's suicide) are the ones that really stand out on this album and make my hair stand on end. I love that back-to-back pairing. I'd get this album just for those two. Recommended. That's not a road Well that caused us to sleep out in the rain all night and around 5am this fellow comes along and pulls us out, but before he does he reminds us one thing about the culvert:"That's not a road. Every time I listen to this cd it reminds me of the time my cousin and I were driving around the back roads of Forks, Washington and when I turned around, my rig slid off the road next to a culvert. " That's what this album means to me and it could mean something else to you. more heart than you know what to do with People have complained on this page of the recording quality, don't listen to them. I certainly don't pretend to be an expert on Westerberg or the Replacements, truth is i only own three of their/his records, but i know quality when i hear it. A guy like Paul Westerberg doesn't need some multi-tracked wonder to be able to capture the spirit of his music, and with this collection of songs we are able to sit in the basement with an artist who has so much more heart/soul and spirit than any other person on this planet. The fact that this album sounds the way it does is because it's not pretending to be anything other than what it really is - an honest portrait of one of the finest songwriting talents there has ever been, playing a solo performance - just for you. You can see a complete list of all Paul Westerberg discography, or go back to the Paul Westerberg tabs