Even in my most pristine undergraduate all women's college, you could hear "Fuck School" being played all over campus every Friday afternoon. There are few men who like indie pop/rock who don't adore the Replacements. There are fewer women I know who are enamoured of them, but all the true punks among them (and a few poseurs) love the 'Mats too. Most of those fans, when questioned about their favourite 'Mats album, will cite Tim or Let It Be, although none will argue that there's anything wrong with Pleased to Meet Me. As the first 'Mats album I ever heard, it will always be my personal favourite. It's essential, though, because the album was a watershed in the band's history and marks the last truly fantastic work that they made as a cohesive whole.
Pleased to Meet Me was released in 1987, toward the end of the greedy Eighties when everyone was realizing that the wealth was only being distributed to a few people. (Big surprise, but in the age of the Material Girl most people I knew thought they were going to strike it rich.) People were weary of Reaganomics and the cloud of recession we were living under. Anthem rock was incredibly popular throughout the decade, but the wave of college rock and alternative rock was growing, and hadn't yet reached its peak. Anything that ran towards independent, angry, quasi-anthemic college-era music was going to get attention and be popular -- and the Replacements, who already had a hardcore fan base, grabbed for a popular hit with this album. With Tim, they had almost tasted mainstream success, and yet with their fear of selling out (particularly, I believe, for Westerberg) they had managed to throw a spanner in their own works, and were on the downslope of their artistic unity. According to articles and reviews, the band members' enmity towards one another was growing, and Westerberg was writing most of the tracks for Pleased to Meet Me, unlike Tim, which had been far more of a group effort. The fact that Pleased to Meet Me came together at all seems amazing to me now. Their follow-up, Don't Tell a Soul, should have been a plea; much as I love the group, the album is absolute shite.
This album, however, shows all of the styles that the band could throw down, in the most perfect form they ever managed to achieve. Unlike the earlier albums, their production had gotten tighter and cleaner, which means that you can hear and understand what the hell they're singing -- although many have argued that it's too clean. Bob Stinson was gone (this is either the first album they made without him or the last one with him, I forget which), which robbed it of some of the more interesting guitar work, but also lots of the extraneous sound that cluttered space. There's something to be said for spareness, too. "Skyway", a short acoustic piece, has got to be one of the loveliest ballads ever written, and the power-pop and gut-wrenching roar of "Nevermind" foreshadowed ideas that would be played out later by Nirvana and the lesser members of the Seattle scene.
The 'Mats typical humour, and talent for writing pure pop gems, was present in "Alex Chilton", which foreshadowed the upcoming angst of Generation X (no, not the band). While articles in the mainstream press wondered what the hell my generation was searching for, or wanted, or was whingeing about and our parents tried vaguely to comprehend it, we simply felt it. The self-loathing, as well as the self-questioning, and directionless wandering, of the generation of fans was encapsulated there... and the fact that the album as a whole had mixed critical success simply underscored that meaning.
-- Jenn Sikes
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