Juliana Hatfield dedicated an entire chapter of her 2008 book “When I Grow up”: A Memoir to Paul Westerberg, and in interviews, she frequently talks about his and the Replacements’ influence on her. She was asked to open for Westerberg on a solo tour after the Replacements broke up, but the tour ended up being cancelled after he threw out his back. Now, however, they’re finally in a band together, The I Don’t Cares, and they released their debut album, “Wild Stab”,
Wild Stab is a jangly, jaunty, lo-fi sprawl. Its 16 tracks sound slapped together with a healthy coat of Mod Podge, delivered straight from a basement studio. Some songs sound remarkably similar to each other, while others stick out at odd angles. It’s as if fussing over an album would’ve made it seem too much like a “statement”; instead, Wild Stab just feels like a couple of pals rockin’ out and having fun, but not worrying too much about the final product. That’s not to say that these songs are anything less than professional — Hatfield and Westerberg are too good to drop any stinkers. This is largely Westerberg’s show, with Hatfield mostly harmonizing her way through. But the result is just as smooth, an album as fun to listen to as it likely was to make.
