When
Tommy Stinson and
Paul Westerberg reunited
the Replacements for a concert tour in 2013, plenty of fans were hoping against hope that the new edition of the band would grace the world with a new album. That didn't happen, but maybe it's just as well. In the wake of
the 'Mats' reunion hitting the ditch in 2015,
Westerberg released one of his spunkiest rock & roll records in years, 2016's Wild Stab, in collaboration with
Juliana Hatfield under the name
the I Don't Cares. And
Stinson has followed suit, reviving
Bash & Pop, the short-lived but well-loved band he formed after
the Replacements' original 1991 implosion. Outside of
Stinson, no one who played on
Bash & Pop's 1993 album,
Friday Night Is Killing Me, appears on 2017's
Anything Could Happen, but the two records share a very similar sound and feel.
Stinson has said that he wanted the return of
Bash & Pop to sound like a band with a good vibe playing live in the studio, and that's exactly what
Anything Could Happen delivers. For these sessions,
Stinson was joined by his core accompanists (Steve Selvidge on guitar and vocals, Justin Perkins on guitar and vocals, Tony Kieraldo on keyboards and vocals, and Joe Sirois on drums), with a few other players making guest appearances (including
Luther Dickinson and Chip Roberts), and here the pieces fall together just right. The performances on
Anything Could Happen have the sort of loose-limbed drive that
the Faces made their trademark (and
the Replacements strove to emulate), especially when Kieraldo attacks his electric piano with loving enthusiasm.
Stinson performs with a perfect fusion of street-kid cockiness, regular-guy smirk, and occasional flashes on heart-on-sleeve philosophizing, and married to these rough-and-ready tunes, smart but never cocky about it, the effect is magic. Though
Stinson is rarely as perceptive as
Westerberg in his songwriting, here
Tommy still sounds engaged with rock & roll in a way his former bandmate can't always muster these days, and he strikes a more satisfying balance between middle-aged responsibility and arrested-adolescent swagger. We'll probably never get that
Replacements reunion album, but like
Westerberg's Wild Stab,
Anything Could Happen effectively channels the best of what
Tommy Stinson brought to
the Replacements, and this unexpected
Bash & Pop "reunion" has made an album just about as good -- and every bit as much fun -- as their minor classic from the '90s. [
Anything Could Happen was also released on LP.] ~ Mark Deming