Westerberg's always had a keen eye for life's ugly truths. Nowhere is that more evident than on the mostly acoustic Stereo, an album he opens with the devastating lilt of "Baby Learns to Crawl," a crooked snapshot of parenthood whose titular baby might be papa or child ("Baby learns to crawl, watching daddy's skin/Learns to fall, get up again"). The razor-sharp "Dirt Into Mud" mines similar subject matter, exploring the necessity of survival through pain and hurt, with lyrics that sound the more earned for Westerberg's recent career woes: "They say a man in pain, he will prepare to die/They say a man who hurts won't even try."
But Stereo's brightest moments are those in which Westerberg's sly lyricism comes to the fore, as it did on the Replacements' best work. "Call me when your eyes are empty/And open all night," he sings on "Only Lie Worth Telling," a wry poison-pen love letter in which double entendres become treble entendres faster than the ear can process. More than any of his solo albums, Stereo rewards multiple listenings; the groaner setup followed by the whip-smart punch line—a trick Westerberg once claimed was the whole secret to his songwriting—is here again in full force, as on the nastily delivered "Boring Enormous": "Here with my headaches and cigars/My love for you is finally scars."
CHRISSY PIPER
Paul Westerberg: off the 'Mats and sounding as good as ever.
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The fractured subject matter on the record's first disc is mirrored by its skeletal arrangements. As Westerberg himself noted a decade ago, rock is about mistakes, about making mistakes work for you, and on Stereo he does just that. Unlike previous efforts, the album is neither mannered nor forced, marked instead by a genuine off-the-cuff feel—out-of-tune guitars, notes not quite reached, tape abruptly running out mid-chorus.
A clattering cover of Flesh for Lulu's "Postcards From Paradise" provides a neat segue into Mono, the disc credited to Grandpaboy, Westerberg's Keith Richards-fixated alter ego. If Stereo's sparse arrangements highlight that disc's intimate lyrics, Mono's riff-heavy crunch allows Westerberg to flaunt his cerebral streak. In an era of cut-rate irony, Paul Westerberg's words remain the genuine article; the swaggering, mealy guitar line of "I'll Do Anything" is undercut by the song's priceless chorus tag, "I'll do anything/you ask/but thaa-at!" From the lurching adolescent cockiness of "Knock It Right Out" to "Kickin' the Stall"—the best outtake from Talk Is Cheap that Richards never recorded—Westerberg/Grandpaboy takes what could have become mere cock-rock posturing and turns it into music with balls and brains in equal measure.
Though it's not the central—or even a terribly significant—criticism of the record, Mono also shows up the paucity of self-styled Westerberg clones. It's the album that latter-day knockoffs like the Goo Goo Dolls have been trying to make ever since the Replacements broke up, and have consistently failed to produce. (Asked about the debt the Goos owed him and his music, Westerberg cracked pricelessly, "If they record one of my songs on their greatest hits album, we'll call it even.")
In large measure, Mono is Paul Westerberg's summative response to those pseudo-fans who wanted him to keep destroying himself so they could live vicariously, a coup other grownup artists have experienced significant trouble achieving. Alex Chilton, for example—long one of Westerberg's own idols—never seemed to be able to walk that line with complete success, always pulling back into insulated, protected cool when a necessary risk would have been the braver move. The Grandpaboy moniker thus makes exquisite sense: Mono is music performed by an elder statesman who's reached back into his youthful enthusiasm and found a rich storehouse of energy in reserve.
Stereo/Mono thus finds Westerberg surpassing both his teachers and his students, refusing to bow under the pressure of his young man blues, refusing to fade away or become obsolete.
He'll do anything we ask. But thaa-at.
bmehr@seattleweekly.com 
