Album Review: Soul Asylum - "Hurry Up And Wait"

 

Poor old Soul Asylum. Back when I was a teenager, they were very much the whipping boys of the grunge movement and generally sneered at as everything that was wrong with the sort of bands who'd seen Nirvana clean up with Nevermind and thought "hey, we could do that!" before hitting paydirt with a watered down version of the formula that could be easily sold on to the mallrats of middle America. The fact that they had a pretty boy singer who was stepping out with Winona Ryder at the time I suspect probably didn't help their cause among our little group of ne'er-do-wells either.

Of course, it was only 15-20 years after the snorefest that was Runaway Train that I found out (from Ginger Wildheart of all people) that this was by no means the whole story and that in the '80s the group had put out three brilliant albums (Made To Be Broken, While You Were Out and the near-flawless Hang Time) which saw them looking more like chief pretenders to the Replacements' slacker-rock throne before their heads were turned into becoming an MOR/grunge car crash.

Close to three decades later, the band are still going albeit with Dave Pirner (aforementioned singer) now being the sole original album with his long-time partner in crime guitarist Dan Murphy having departed the fold prior to their previous album. 2016's Change of Fortune. It gets off to a good start with the melodic rock of The Beginning sounding like a more mellow take from their late '80s imperial phase.

Mellow, as it turns out, is pretty much the watchword here and I guess a lot will depend on whether you prefer Soul Asylum's spikier early output or their more ballad-ridden '90s years as to what you think of Hurry Up And Wait. Pirner is definitely still a man with a knack for a good tune as evidenced on the Springsteen-esque Make Her Laugh and Silent Treatment although in places the songs do stray a bit over the line of tweeness such as the schmaltzy If I Told You and Here We Go.

I do kind of wish there was something along the lines of Cartoon or Sometime To Return on here to properly pack a punch though. To be fair to Pirner and the guys they do try to up the tempo a bit on the likes of Got It Pretty Good and Busy Signals but these are some way short of the quality of the aforementioned with the possible exception of the zippy Hopped Up Feelin' (the closest thing here to their slacker-punk past) and maybe Freezer Burn which has a bit of a similarity to the classic Little Too Clean if you squint a bit. It maybe says a lot though that in the main, Soul Asylum here sound more comfortable on something like the mournful acoustic led Dead Letter or the actually quite touching ode to growing old Silly Things which closes the album than they do on the slightly awkward attempt at spiking the sound up on Landmines.

Ultimately this is very much the sound of a middle-aged Soul Asylum albeit one who admittedly do still have a good way with a decent hook and at least they sound in the main like they're happy to accept that this sort of MOR melodic rock is where their strength lies now so fair play to them. If you want to investigate it further, you can do so at the Soul Asylum Bandcamp page.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑 (6/10)