One Wink at a Time

In hindsight, there are few clues to where Paul Westerberg's solo career would go post-Replacements than the second song off All Shook Down.

The song starts with just Westerberg's murmured vocals and his acoustic guitar, but unlike, say, "Unsatisfied" or "Bastards of Young," when the rest of the band comes in, they sidle, rather explode or bash or pop. Westerberg may have used polished studio vets rather than his hometown homeboys, but there's a certain...off-the-cuffness to it, shall we say (although half-assedness might be more accurate). And yet somehow there's a polished sterility about it.

His slightly gruff Everyman vocals are as accessible as always, especially since he's in softer mode here, with only a hint of some of the odd gutturalisms with which he peppers "Merry Go Round." Steve Berlin's horn honks agreeably if unnecessarily in the background, like a chill goose stopping by on his way to or from the frozen north.

The lyrics have plenty of those phrases or unexpected twists that no other post-punk writer would even think of, but none are nearly as effective as the second verse

Baggage claim is this way
So watch her walk down that way
In a hurry
To put an end to his day

which, with the benefit of 20/20 (and 2020) hindsight, leads one to suspect he was talking about himself and situation with the band, given how seemed to be in a hurry to walk away from the accumulated baggage of a handful of brilliant records, even more brilliant shows, and just as many catastrophic ones.

The bridge is a nice counterpoint—where you suspect he's going to let loose, vocally, for the first time, instead he does just the opposite, and gets even softer and higher, almost crooning "any other time's cool." (And yet, alas, this is the one we're stuck in.)

It's all...it's fine. And while many artists very deliberately set up their albums to open with a devastating 1-2 punch, the 'Mats rarely did: sure, "Favorite Thing" and, especially, "Alex Chilton" were the second songs off their respective LPs, but on the other hand, even the great Tim had the meagre "I'll Buy," while Don't Tell a Soul had the agreeable but not really spectacular "Back to Back" (which isn't entirely dissimilar to "One Week," tonally, in its quietude without actually being a ballad).

It's catchy, it's well-written and well-sung and well-played, if perhaps a bit antiseptically (outside the guitar solo which seems like it was maybe a first take and left in as a sign that they hadn't totally left their punk "we don't care" attitude behind, even as Westerberg embraced his inner singer-songwriter.

The end result is a very pleasant three minutes, and a great example of why this is generally considered their weakest album since Stink and—in retrospect—what we had in store for his solo career: brilliant moments and bits and bobs and overly genteel stretches as he tried to prove over and over, long after every else had more than accepted it, that he was an artist and not just some punk. As though the two were mutually exclusive.