With all due respect to Mssrs Westerberg, Mars and Dunlap: all have produced great work since the Replacements folded. Chris Mars made some great one-man garage rock, with heavy echoes of '60's grunge (early Kinks, etc.). Slim Dunlap released the best Replacements song that never was ("The Ballad of the Opening Band"), and Paul has given us album after album of, well, trademark "Paul-ness." Heartfelt sandpaper vocals, ragged-but-right playing, sometimes reflective, sometimes fun, most often inbetween. And just for the record, I play all of their solo stuff pretty often, along with my Replacements records.
But Tommy has been different. Not content (or confident enough, maybe?) to be a solo artist, he formed Bash and Pop way back when, and released the great Faces/Stones inspired album 'Friday Night Is Killing Me.' Promptly dismissed by Sire records when the album didn't do well, he turned to old mate and Twin-Tone founder Peter Jesperson to release an EP by his second post-Mat's band, Perfect. The resulting 'When Squirrels Play Chicken' is a great slice of loose, garagey hard rock and punk, capped by a sloppy cover of "Crocodile Rock." By the time Perfect had recorded a follow-up, Jesperson's Medium Cool records was in limbo, and so was the album.
We all know what happened next: Tommy joined Guns'n'Roses. A few shows and A LOT of studio time later, G'n'R has yet to release more than one song, but Tommy got a record deal, and not only does this mark his de jure 'solo' debut, he has produced what is possibly the finest album by an ex-Replacement so far.
Why, you may ask? First of all, he breaks new musical ground and finds his own identity. The variety of styles on this album run from Big Star-esque plainative songs ("Without A View") to Dylanesque folk-pop ("Hey You") to good old fashioned pop-punk that made the Mat's what they were ("What's Your Motivation").
Second, he's finally got his own songwriting voice. Gone are the Westerbergisms of earlier efforts (ok, there's one, but it's minor), replaced with his own sense of song structure, heavily influenced by everyone from Alex Chilton to his current employer.
Third, this is easily the most heavily layered album by any ex-Replacement. Musically, it accomplishes what 'Don't Tell A Soul' only hinted at: complex, rocking, fully explored electric music with a bonfire in its belly. 'Don't Tell A Soul' mostly failed in this regard. 'Village Gorilla Head' fulfills the promise of that long-ago record: A hard, driving album, deeply complex, with massive intelligence and passion behind it.
I buy a lot of music, and I've got to say that this is possibly the best album I've bought in a year. As Jim Dickinson once said, "Tommy Stinson IS rock'n'roll." (And folk, and pop, and punk, and lots of other things.)
Buy this record. Tommy needs the cash.