New Release Tuesday: The Replacements & Monotonix

Tel Aviv's Monotonix have been touring since early February. If you missed them during SXSW (they played 9 times, so you really have no excuse), you missed one of the world's most thrilling live sets and one of the loudest bands you'll ever see. Harnessing Israel's raucous garage punk rockers was a task for the Fucking Champs' (and former Nation of Ulysses recruit) Tim Green in the studio, but a sympathetic sort of justice has been done. The six song EP thunders through tracks like a bullet train, guitars and drums pummeling the listener with rapid, stinging one-two punches and pinches. There's some question as to whether or not this band will always be trying to live up to the live set, or live it down, but we'll happily wait and see. After all, how often do you have to move out of the way from flaming cymbals at a show?

Monotonix MySpace
Buy Body Language @ Drag City
Monotonix @ SXSW (YouTube)

The Replacements, whatever opinion one has about the post-Sire, post-Stinson era, were one of the first American underground rock bands to be wooed, signed and promoted by a major label in the early '80s. After Let it Be was released in 1984, the band signed and almost immediately imploded in a barrage of firings, arguments over pop tendencies (mostly singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg's) and ego-tastic episodes. They disbanded in 1991. Rhino's releases, however, focus on the music that was written back in Minneapolis before the 1984 Sire signing. In those days, the Replacements were singing odes to their friends (and rivals) across town, Hüsker Dü, a little less serious, and on the cutting edge of independent music in America. These albums, primarily Let it Be and Hootenanny, were critical successes immediately but never sold well. This might be partly due to Westerberg's consistent fluctuation between artful, emotional pieces like "Sixteen Blue" and "Unsatisfied" and one-off, almost joke tunes like "Gary's Got a Boner." At the time, it was hard to pinpoint exactly what the band was trying to do. Post-hardcore pop music hadn't become the normalized sugar pill it is today, and it was confusing. But there was a lot of interior confusion and fence-straddling within the songs, too, which make them so heartbreaking and classic in retrospect, not the littlest bit damaged by time. The result of all this perceived flip-flopping was a generous chasm of youth encapsulated in this handful of records that define angst, jealousy, young love, disillusionment, rock'n'roll egotism and the sincerest of hopes.

Stream various re-releases @ Spinner
Paul Westerberg @ MySpace
Buy @ End of an Ear