Customer Reviews

Folker

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is a good album. How can anyone hear As Far As I Know and not get what a great pop song is?

For that song alone, Paul gets 4 stars. But My Dad, Breathe some new life, Looking up in Heaven -- all terrific tunes.

I think the expectations were a wall-to-wall masterpiece. This isn't. But I ask: When has Paul made such a thing?

It's simple, if you like Paul: When he's good, he's greater than anything else. And when he's less than that -- well -- it's a processs. Those great ones come out of that processs. So, hate track 3, 4, 9 -- but the best tracks -- they're rock and roll with all the beauty and twisty honesty only Paul can make.

Perfect? No.

Paul? Yes.

Good Paul?

I refer you to As Far as I know.

Every song on this album is well performed and well placed. The songs Mr. Westerberg delivers here show an increasing comfort with the way he wants to make music and express himself. There are some lonely songs that bring the world into the basement window. This album is probably closer to the music and process he wishes he could have made and released all along. This album is Lennon's "Double Fantasy" without all the studio dumbing up, overdubs and fluff (and Yoko). Listening to Lennon's home demos from the recent "Acoustic" release, one realizes the warmth and feel that was lost in the studio. This album isn't as easy to digest right out of the gate, but with a few listens, the substance, emotion and raw expression seep out of the cracks. "Gun Shy" is the album's single, so of course it's track 12 of 13. Mr. Westerberg has always been prone to burying the most appealing songs at the back of the drawer. If you like "Stereo" or "Suicaine Gratification" you'll be pleased to own this CD. Some themes come up a few times on the album, but that may be a reflection of where Mr. Westerberg's head is spending most of it's time and isn't a drastic change for those that have followed the Replacements and beyond. It's a very personal album with a solid mix of upbeat, slower, acoustic and electric songs.

Possibly Westerberg's best yet.

When you strip away whatever youthful nostalgia you might associate with older works from the Replacements, and measure things up track by track, this album takes second place to none. Some of its songs could secretly wedge themselves into older works and never sound out of place.

Folker vaults Paul from the netherworld between youthful angst and middle age reflection. True, there are some retrospective ballads on Folker, but there is, nevertheless, a gratitude and humility in Folker, and a sincerity that comes from a man who has finally shaken off the past and settled into the present. For its quality and deftness, this album floats on a plane above all of his recent work.

For those who found Grandpa Boy a bit thin and half-hearted, with its bare-cupboard home studio sound and distracted themes, this album will please. Its production values are robust and rich, but not overdone. It is well balanced, with none of the aging-star desperation that seemed to undergird All Shook Down; remember how techy and awkward and forced much of that sounded compared to the authentic and moving Let it Be and Tim?

Folker brings at least five tracks that in and of themselves justify the silica that gave their lives for this disc. Below is a list of Folker's tracks. See asterisks for the album's best tracks.*

1) Jingle - A sarcastic, Beatlesque song-as-tuning-fork.

2) *Now I Wonder - Vague, forgivably overwrought, spiritual, and moving.

3) *My Dad - A clever and surreptitiously sentimental love song to his ailing father.

4) *Lookin' Up In Heaven - A spacious, rhythmic, tireless and nostalgic paean for love lost.

5) *Anyway's All Right - Painted from the everwet pallet of the romantic Replacements artiste, this rolling ballad has an hypnotic attenuation to it. Truly beautiful with its haunting harmonies. The album's best track.

6) $100.00 Groom - Paul flaunting his reckless metre

7) 23 Years Ago - an unremarkable interregnum between good songs on either side of it.

8) *As Far As I Know - The Monkeys, had they been talented. An anthemic pop song, and a tuneful diagnosis for the FHM generation.

9) What About Mine? Fills the last 50 meg of a 700 meg CD.

10) How Can You Like Him? Dissonance tamed, in a way only Paul can.

11) Breathe Some New Life - Second half of song could be good; I wouldn't know.

12) Gun Shy - Coherent, yet unremarkable and blandly enumerative.

13) Folk Star - Rhymes with "plastic red guitar" ... a deliberately shallow self-parody of Paul's emerging rep as a Folker.

One professional reviewer has declared that Folker embarrasses everything around it, and you know what? That is about right. Paul Westerberg set the bar pretty high for himself a long time ago, and he has hurdled it again.

I got a chance to see him in concert in February of this year (2005) at the Showbox in Seattle, and he was better than ever. Paul is not solo on this tour; he is backed with a full band. He sounded clear and strong. Much better than during his Seattle concert for the release of Grandpa Boy a couple years back. I honestly think his range is better than when he was in his twenties. This recent concert was two hours of uninterrupted High Folkage, with a four minute break in the middle. You gotta love that kind of focus in today's music world.

Obviously, Folker is a must-buy for 'Mats or Westerberg fans.

Thanks to my brother Mikey who sprang for the CD, so I could hear it from start to finish.

Liam Pierce

I know you're skeptical. I'm always skeptical. Every album comes out, and someone says it's great. Then I buy it, listen to it a few times, and file it away forever, wondering why I keep trying. Well, we all know why I keep trying-what if he really did something impossibly great again?

I think Paul's solo career has amounted to very little of any worth. I think the Grandpaboy material is pretty much an insult to his fans-"look, I don't even have to try, and they'll still buy it."

Well, I'm here to tell you that this album finally delivers on the promise. This is the best collection of songs Paul's released since "Pleased to Meet Me." No lame blues, no half-constructed or half-recorded songs. He's really trying here, and it shows. This album has all of the great Westerberg hallmarks: it's funny, beautiful, heart-breaking, gruff, and, occasionally rocking. It's still pretty low-fi, but there's a full, real band, and the performances are not tossed off, but relaxed and confident. Paul's singing is perfectly imperfect--sometimes off-key, but when wasn't it? The real revelation is his guitar-playing. He really pulls off a nice Keith/Ronny country raunch, with some great rhythm playing (see "Now I Wonder," "My Dad"). In fact, to me, this record has a real "Exile on Main St." vibe. Obviously, it's not that kind of masterpiece, but it's got the same kind of laid back, country-honk, recorded in the basement vibe. Trying, but not so much that the soul of the songs gets squashed. The record is lived-in and breathes.

There are some great, great songs here. Most are excellent. "Twenty-three years ago" is one of Paul's all-time great songs. Up there with pretty much anything he's ever written. In general, there's a real maturity here (finally)-not old, but mature. It feels like he's finally put the disappointments of the failed expectations of the past to rest. Like he's finally really past all of it, and just writing and making great music again.

Replacements fan, I know who you are. And I'm telling you to give Paul another shot here. Listen to this thing 7 or 8 times, and tell me it's not great. He has finally once again produced something that is worthy of his staggering talent.

This is a great album. Although all of the songs don't rank with Paul's best, the production is warm and cozy and the playing is nice and raw. This is what Mono should have been. That was a great album, but this one is better, in my opinion. I think as long as Paul doesn't overproduce his records, they tend to be good because his personality is so likable that it overshadows any sloppiness in the writing. Pick this up if you like early Rod Stewart. Think cloudy days and shag carpet and a big glass of brown ale. It's that good!

im one of those guys who never bought into the whole thing that ,all punk and indie bands where great, even though i was involved in the whole thing...i can count the truly awesome bands of the eighties and ninetees on one hand ( okay two) the rest bored the $#*& THE REPLACEMENTS where and still are one of those awesome bands..and as time marches on ,and the more i listen to paul westerbergs solo albums the more i love them all, to the point i even prefer them over the great replacement albums..his song wrtiing here is extroadinary, personal,insightful,and can only be written by someone special...my dad..what about mine ..lookin up in heaven..are 3 of his best ever songs...what about mine, sorta is a follow up tho.sadly beautiful, a song from a father to his son..raw,honest and from the heart...what a trajedy that westerberg is not a huge seeling artists..buy this..play it..and buy the others to.

Into my third listen of folker, i began to totally get into it.
the first being at work. the second listen on my way home from work . Southern california traffic!! and the third time, once i got home and relaxed with a six pack of beer. Wow! it was really good. It's fun and recorded, played by paul. in his basement. People don't seem to have time to really listen to records these days. It's not a cup noodles (instant that is) I woke up this morning with the record on my mind. I wanted to hear the record
with some coffee. it was great. The Replacements where the Replacements. Leave that alone. this is paul (folk star)

I'm sorry - I love PW as much as anyone out there, but aside from a few good tracks (My Dad, Lookin' out in Heaven, As Far As I Know, Gun Shy), this album is really quite atrocious.

Poor writing ($100 Groom), unfunny/lame jokes (Jingle), and painfully poor vocals (Breathe Some New Life) just kill this album... that last song really makes me cringe.

It may have been recorded in the same manner as Stereo/Mono, Come Feel Me Tremble & Dean Man Shake - but this one is lacking in both material and (from what I can tell) interest on Paul's part.

Hardly "the bomb" we were all anticipating.

This one seems to have polarised the Paul-lovers, not quite sure why.

Down here in the Antipodes, where he's yet to tour, it sounds fine. You can't say it's as good as the instant classics of Stereo, but you could say that Stereo, Come Feel me Tremble, and Folker, represent the most consistent period in Paul's up and down career.

He still has the gift, that somehow enables him to conjure wonderful songs out of unlikely chunks of language. Of the current crop of American pop writers, Jay Farrar is one of the few who can match him.

The deliberately down-in-the-basement one-take recording style might seem like a pose, but it suits Paul's work and there's no reason to quit.

I am a very biased Westerberg/Replacements fan, just so you know. As usual, PW has released a fantastic recording that in an unpolished form is ten times better than other "popular" music played on the radio that have been processed to death to hide imperfections. Give me something real anytime- Westerberg delivers every time!!!