The Accidental Poet Laureate of a Generation

PAUL WESTERBERG

“14 Songs”

Reprise

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There are perhaps a handful of artists who come along in a generation and reflect the trenchancies and truancies of their time honestly enough that, if you’re of a similar age, you sort of latch on to them for the long haul, maybe even look forward to growing older and having them document your experience.

Westerberg is one of those, at least for recalcitrant rockers of a certain post-30 mind-set--although he has just enough punk left in him that he’d probably hate being saddled with the mantle. He’s the star stumblebum who accidentally turned into poet laureate.

Having come out of what started as a quasi-punk band--the late, great Replacements--Westerberg remains endearingly surly on the outside, if all but a complete sentimentalist in his innards. That generation-specific tension between irreverence and melancholia informs his work in a way that makes much of it seem as classic as it is decidedly casual.

For make no mistake, “14 Songs”--his first official solo album--is pretty offhand-feeling. True to the title, the songs are sequenced pretty arbitrarily; you could probably do as good a job ordering the album’s structure by hitting the random-play button on your CD player. It’s not all greatness by any means--and it’s no accident that the lyrics’ key image is of a flower growing in a garbage dump--but with Westerberg, somehow, it’s his determination to stir the trash up with the treasure that, in an age of perfectionist pop perjurers, probably helps keep him (and us) on the level.

Heaven knows he takes enough pokes at the wiles of fashion and his own fashionableness here. “The avant guards unlock your cage / You’re sick to death of the latest rage / Afraid of love, it always fades,” he sings in a quick, all-encompassing wisp of a verse, hopefully adding, “Take it to a higher plane / Take me where the action ain’t.”

He cuts some quick swaths through pop culture. In “Mannequin Shop,” easily the funniest song of the year, he takes aim at women who maintain their youth through any means necessary.

In “A Few Minutes of Silence” (a sequel to the Replacements’ classic “I Hate Music,” maybe?), he puts in a desperate request for the deejay to just turn the music off for a little while. And in the cautionary rant “World Class Fad,” he seems to be making fun of the younger musicians who worship him, till you realize that he’s really mocking his own flavor-of-the-minute self.

There are tender moments, though. Westerberg, 32, is at the perfect age both to look back--as in “First Glimmer,” a touching ballad squarely in the traditional nostalgic-for-first-love mode--and to be fighting off the lowered expectations of maturity, as in “Runaway Wind”: “You trade your telescope for a keyhole / You make way for the gray that’s in your brown / As dreams make way for plans / I see you watch life from the stands / C’mon, I’ll help you burn ‘em to the ground.”

Lest Westerberg indulge too much in his singer-songwriter side, there’s a silly Stonesy romp and a couple of punky rave-ups reminiscent of the stuff that used to have the Palladium crowds moshing.

Whichever side you prefer, “14 Songs” is a small comeback. Westerberg’s last album under the band moniker was meager enough that some fans started looking toward the many young groups out there eager to replace the Replacements--like the Goo Goo Dolls, whose latest album was virtually Replacements-mania (and very good). But this return to form proves Westerberg’s description of himself as a “World Class Fad” only half-right. The right half.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).