TGIF&L: My favorite Replacements album is going deluxe

Plus new Joyce Manor, new Wednesday, and new Deftones

Happy Friday everyone. I was just in Marseille but I’m not going to talk about it. I’ve since hauled my extra large Away suitcase and 30 lb Louis Neverfull (the Sprouse one, thank you for asking) on a very small turbulent plane ride where I hunched over my google doc the entire way and also up and down many flights of stairs but guess what I will never be a light packer and I will never apologize for this. I need 30% of my suitcase to remain unworn for the duration of the trip. This is my emotional support baggage, a reminder of a person (more feminine, more glamorous, less interested in elastic waist track shorts) past me imagined I would be. Also I guess other people don’t need to travel with five or six rock biographies but we do each walk our own winding roads. I’m tapping this very succinct round-up out now from Rome (ciao) with a stomach full of carbonara (was informed this is actually a winter pasta and I should probably drown myself in the Trevi fountain) and a heart full of happiness because:

• My favorite Replacements album, Let It Be (it was the first one I heard at eleven or twelve years old, I think nine times out of ten your entry point becomes the most cherished bit) is getting the Rhino Deluxe Edition treatment on 10/24. Here’s an alternate version of “Androgynous” (god tier song) in advance of the release. I still, thirty odd years later, think “I Will Dare” is one of the most romantic songs ever written. Westerberg wrote more nuanced (see “Left Of The Dial”) and more bleak (see “Within Your Reach”) love songs, and they’re all fucking incredible, but there’s just something in “I Will Dare” that captures the kind of love you can only fall into when you’re young and really don’t know any better. Or maybe you can do it whenever, it just gets harder and harder? I won’t pretend I know for sure. Let’s count the rings around my eyes etc. Anyway last year’s magical Ed Stasium remix of Tim was something profound and special and while I don’t think this remaster alone will be as frankly earth shattering as hearing those Tim songs lovingly excavated from the dregs of their original terrible recording, I’m still excited for it, especially this bit:

  The collection also includes Goodnight! Go Home!, an unreleased 28-song performance recorded in August 1984 at the Cubby Bear in Chicago. Sourced from an audience tape and newly remastered, it finds the Minneapolis quartet charging through material from the not-yet-released album (“I Will Dare” and “Unsatisfied”), early favorites (“Color Me Impressed” and “Takin’ A Ride”), and characteristically offbeat covers “Help Me Rhonda/Little G.T.O.” (originally done by The Beach Boys/Ronny & The Daytonas) and “Can’t Get Enough” (Bad Company). I don’t own a record player (those come and go with boyfriends) but I do have an appreciation for physical media as artifact so if anyone at Rhino is reading and wants to send over the box set, I will be here with open arms (one of which does contain a poorly spaced ‘Mats lyric tattoo).

• While I do lightly resent them for pushing me down the list of most famous people hailing from beautiful Torrance, CA (not a terribly long list tbh, shout out Aly & AJ and Michelle Kwan, and also some sports guys), I am always happy when Joyce Manor puts out new music because it’s just always good. The new track “All My Friends Are So Depressed”, produced by Brett Gurewitz, is a different sound for them - it’s almost like this jangly, sad what-if-The-Smiths-but-emo situation? I love it. Barry Johnson is one of the great pop-punk yowlers of our time but his voice is good enough for this kind of existential ditty too. Great lyrics. “Why exist?/Who gives a fuck?” is very two guys staring out opposite bus windows meme. I do hope a song on whatever the new JM project is has a line about El Burrito Jr. finally. Here is the cute music video. (Fun fact about me is that I listen to the song “Heart Tattoo” almost every day? I’m fine).

  

• Speaking of cute music videos, something about watching Karly Hartzman from Wednesday drink tequila in a bikini, trucker hat, and sunglasses on a boat on a lake in the new video for their song “Bitter Everyday” made me miss the USA a little? Like this is the kind of American culture we can be proud of (the other day the man at the French pharmacy yesterday grimaced so hard when I handed him my passport I thought he was having a stroke but like, fair enough monsieur). Also someone needs to do a super cunty high fashion with Karly around this album. She will tear.

• New Deftones album is good!

• You should read Alex Frank on Lana Del Rey and Ethel Cain. His mind…

I bought a perfect sterling silver shell necklace at a vintage jewelry store and spotted a hot priest today (amazing omens imo) so things are going well I think. I keep hearing different versions of this song I loved in college, Manu Chao’s “Me Gustas Tu”, everywhere - in a cool Algerian guy’s Uber, in the Tabacchi across from the hotel, etc - and I do think god is still on it with the little divine song messages, even if I don’t yet know what they mean.

Til next week xx