Finally, Paul Westerberg gets it right. After spending the nineties churning out puke-tastic ballads, the Minneapolis born ‘n’ bred icon has rediscovered his roots with Come Feel Me Tremble. No, Tremble does not sound like a Replacements album, and no, it’s not without its’ droopy balladry. But that doesn’t matter. After all, it’s been more than a decade since the demise of The Mats, and Westerberg is no longer a picture of carefree, youthful ignorance.
Rather, he appears to be a comfortably retrospective aging rock star. From the spastic rave-up of “My Daydream,” to the haunting sadness of “Never Felt like This Before,” Tremble exudes the dualism that has come to define Westerberg’s career. A constant battle between young and old, the album encapsulates Westerberg’s middle-aged reality. “Knockin’ Em Back” sounds like gramps’ favorite lederhosen-shakin’ polka after an assault by The Sex Pistols, and epitomizes Westerberg’s aging take on youthful tendencies. “Dirty Diesel and “Making Me Go” churn with a bite that Mike Tyson would envy, while the tortured delivery in “Meet Me Down The Alley” recalls gut-wrenching emotion only Westerberg can strum up. Fittingly, this contrasting portrait of young and old is rounded out with Jackson Browne’s own take on aging, “These Days.” As for Paul Westerberg, it seems that these days he’s not bothered by the shadows of his prolific past as he reinvents himself for the future.