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Paul Westerberg is getting kind of old for an enfant terrible,
so I'm sure he's responding to an inner urge rather than Sire's
siren call. But with its maturing tempos and hooky guitar-chime
echoes, Don't Tell a Soul, his third album for the major
label since he triumphed over chaos for indie Twin/Tone with 1984's
Let It Be, sounds like the commercial compromise his cult
began claiming in 1985. His gifts are undiminished--he's pithy,
tuneful, raucous, sincere. But though he proved long ago that the
longing for wisdom is a winsome thing, achieving it is harder. Back
when he wrote songs called "Fuck School" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils
Out" and "Kiss Me on the Bus," Westerberg and his careening band
made adolescent angst not just intellible but compelling. Summing
up his ruefully jaundiced worldview in "We'll Inherit the Earth"
and "Asking Me Lies" or his feelings on "Achin' To Be" and "Darlin'
One," he's just pithy, tuneful, raucous, and sincere. Which is plenty,
and not enough.
In age and class, Long Island's De La Soul are like the young Replacements.
But the same pop cuteness and accessibility that represent a retreat
for the white hardcore veterans signify an audacious eccentricity
in the black rappers. 3 Feet High and Rising (Tommy Boy)
is radically unlike any rap album you or anybody else has ever heard.
With its 24 cuts crammed into 67 minutes (long enough to make cassette
or CD sound a must), it's playful, arch, often obscure, sometimes
self-indulgent. Yes, they write songs about their "jimmies"--there's
even a heavy breathing interlude called "De La Orgee." But they're
also fascinated by childhood, and by high school. "Treading Water"
features a squirrel, a monkeys, a fish, and a crocodile; "Transmitting
Live from Mars" samples a French lesson. De La Soul's totem is the
daisy. You can dance to them.
Playboy, Feb. 1989
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Jan. 1989 |
Mar. 1989 |
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