Paul Westerberg

Dead Man Shake (as Grandpaboy) (2003)

Adam White

There's a wonderful, low-fi simplicity to early rock and roll that's
been lost in a lot of today's music. Paul Westerberg's Grandpaboy
is one of the few modern acts from a rock background that has been able to successfully capture that
sound without sounding derivative, ironic or blatantly nostalgic. Dead Man
Shake is an album of material that could have been written in the 40s and
50s, filtered through the lens of early garage and punk.
While Westerberg's clean and sober solo outings have largely split the
opinions of old time `Mats fans, the Grandpaboy releases continue to revive
the sloppy revelry The Replacements were celebrated for. If you fail to see
the charm in dirty old blues standards recorded in a single "warts-and-all"
take, you're missing what makes Dead Man Shake so enjoyable.
It's not hard to see where Westerberg's influences are here, as
tracks like "Get A Move On" could have been a long lost Rolling
Stones tune. You can hear the imprints of blues legends tunes like "Take
Out Some Insurance" and "Natural Mean Lover." There's a
batch of respectable covers as well, including John Prine's "Souvenirs"
and a trembling version of the Sammy Davis Jr. standard "What Kind Of
Fool Am I." Westerberg even picks up a slide guitar for a wailing version
of Hank Williams Sr.'s landmark "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."
My favourite tracks on Dead Man Shake are the original compositions,
particularly the shuffling Minneapolis anthem "MPLS" and the delta-blues
drug tale "O.D. Blues." The highlight of the record is "Vampires
& Failures," a haunting and infectious tune that's one the best
of the year.
Dead Man Shake doesn't fall into the trap of being a low-appeal
side project simply because it doesn't carry Westerberg's name on
the cover. This holds up well to anything he's recorded in his solo career
and is a fun, loose record in a year that's been filled with heavy, self-important
releases. It's great that Fat Possum's behind this, because it fits in perfectly
with the label's bare-knuckle blues sound.