The Replacements: "Unsatisfied"

Paul Westerberg may not be a household name, at least if you were born in the late eighties or early nineties. I was first introduced to Westerberg and The Replacements while riding around with my father during my teenage years. At the time, I was enrapt with bands like The Strokes and The Libertines. Ever the musical mentor, The Replacements were one of those bands that my father would load into the cd dock because he hoped I would find similar enjoyment from a band that had pioneered the sounds I currently delighted in. He would take those fifteen or twenty minutes while we skirted around town on various errands, times where he was in sole control of the radio, to give me a little lesson in rock’s fecund heritage.

Let It Be has been the recipient of more than a few listens in the past few weeks. It is a fantastic album, a perfect encapsulation of The Replacements and an obvious indicator to the depth of inspiration that many alt-rock groups owe Westerberg and company. In the twenty-five or so years since this album was first released, songs like “Unsatisfied” and “Androgynous” remain among the ultimate archetypes of American rock music. Robert Christgau, the famed rock critic, awarded Let It Be with a grade of A+. When the album was reissued in 2008, Pitchfork reaffirmed the album’s potency by stamping it with a 10.0 (just as a point of reference, the only album to receive such an accolade from Pitchfork in 2010 was Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy).

“Unsatisfied” is set in motion by two intertwined guitar riffs, with the faint fingerprints of absentminded daydreams smudged across them. Westerberg’s yelp marshals the drums forth, securing a more regimented tempo, as he launches in to a verse that is so bare, yet so revealing: “Look me in the eye / Then, tell me that I’m satisfied / Was you satisfied? / Look me in the eye / Then, tell me that I’m satisfied / Hey, are you satisfied?” The palpable ache with which these queries are delivered is remarkably striking, given the simplicity of the lexicon. Furthering the weight of these loaded words is the uncertain direction in which they have been lobbed. Are they a probing introspection or the preamble to an argument littered with accusations and slanderous broadsides?

Within the orbit of “Unsatisfied,” never has bleak disillusionment sounded quite so beautiful. Whether it is the apprehension of desires slipping out of reach (“And it goes so slowly on / Everything I’ve ever wanted / Tell me what’s wrong”) or the reality that dreams so desperately craved are fiction (“Everything you dream of / Is right in front of you / And liberty is a lie”), Westerberg breathes out the odor of the shattering of naivete with each syllable. Such words are gently intertwined with the magnificent mourning pouring forth from the orchestration of guitars and percussion. Digging deeply with a gravelly strength, the track reaches its crescendo as the mantra of this splintered innocence is issued by Westerberg, repeating: “I’m so, I’m so unsatisfied / I’m so dissatisfied,” while a guitar weeps the highest of pitches against the backdrop. It is with that aching riff that “Unsatisfied” fades away, but the stain of the track’s echoing credo cannot be scrapped off quite so similarly.