You’re a kid in the ‘80s. You’ve just come home from a shitty day at school, gotten yelled at by your mom because you got caught smoking dope under the bleachers at school, and you think your girl might be cheating on you with your best friend. Everything, to put it politely, is fucked.

But you’re listening to a band, and jeez, these guys are great because they get exactly what you’re going through, singing about every fucked up notion of career, love, friendship, family, anger and longing you ever had, and they’re not pretentious like any of the other underground rock bands that the douches at your school are into. But your friends don’t care and the Internet doesn’t exist, so you don’t know anyone else who cares about these guys. And so you sit alone in your room, lying on your bed, listening to these guys play and for a moment, at least someone understands you.

Fans of The Replacements, one of the most influential, before-their-time-but-not-really bands from the ‘80s, are in love with the band, not in a way that people say to posture themselves as having good taste, but for reasons like the ones described above. They played songs that obviously weren’t written for you but still sounded like it, and a generation of misunderstood youth, punk rockers, intellectuals and college kids fell in love. They amassed a giant college fan base even though mainstream audiences didn’t care, and didn’t have a hit until they were churning out atypical soft-rock stuff for a major label that still sounded decent but was nothing like their earlier albums put out on an indie label — the ones everyone would hoist up as examples of perfection if they came out today. The Replacements can be remembered for taking the pretension out of underground music, being honest and crude, and having the best songs of any band from that era.

Lucky for us, those first four albums have just been re-mastered and re-released in order to make some money off trendy revival fetishists as washed-up bands tend to do these days, so that everyone can get their panties in a bunch and wonder whether or not they’re going to play Coachella. The Replacements will play another show when they feel like it, so we can just turn our attention to the albums.

Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981)

Some people might say this album sounds muddled, noisy, and crappy. Those people are idiots, or at the very least, not into punk rock. This album’s a real screamer, fifteen tracks clocking in at just under thirty-two minutes and burstin’ at the seams with vitriol and fire. It’s The Replacements like they’d never sound again because they got older, learned how to play better, hired better producers, etc., but it’s got a certain charm to it like the other records don’t, ripping songs like “I Hate Music” (about hating music, natch) and “Somethin’ to Du” (about pissing off Hüsker Dü, a hardcore band also from Minnesota) in just over a half hour. Lead guitarist and professional fuck-up Bob Stinson’s a blowtorch here, his solos sandwiched in between the typical punk rock chugging that fills up most of the songs. But The Replacements don’t play to formula: Check “Johnny’s Gonna Die,” the first instance of lead singer/song-writer Paul Westerberg’s anti-pop genius, a song that slows down when everyone was expecting fast and loud, with Stinson even whipping out a soulful solo, a soul-o if you will (I am so sorry for that). Rock critic Lester Bangs once wrote something about how the Replacements sounded like every other hardcore band out there, probably from hearing this record. That might have been true at the time, had the ‘Mats just stayed the band they were here. But they didn’t, getting sick of the hardcore scene and moving onto a larger spectrum of influences, and in its proper context, Sorry Ma is a punk-rock stepping stone to real greatness.
Key tracks: Takin’ A Ride, Customer, Johnny’s Gonna Die, I’m In Trouble, If Only You Were Lonely (reissue)

Stink (1982)

Alright, I lied a little when I said the ‘Mats (as they were affectionately referred to) got tired of punk rock after their first record, as they kicked out this eight-song EP just fifteen minutes long before they started branching out. Still, it’s one of the best throw-away records ever made, a group of songs that song like they were recorded off-the-cuff and slapped together (the album title does nothing but support that idea). It’s real cerebral punk/hardcore stuff — either it hits you in the head when you’re trying to study and makes you yell out loud, or it doesn’t, and you go back to listening to Sufjan Stevens. All the songs here should have been anthems for alienated Midwesterners (making this album all the more relevant for Northwestern students) but with its low production quality and limited release, it never caught on like The Ramones had five years before. The reissue adds one of the first Westerberg solo gems, the sweet ballad “You’re Getting Married,” which was rejected by the rest of the Replacements when Westerberg played it to them, as Bob Stinson said, “Save that for your solo album — that ain’t the Replacements.” It’s great.
Key tracks: Kids Don’t Follow,
God Damn Job, Stuck in the Middle, You’re Getting Married (reissue)

Hootenanny (1983)

This record throws everything and the kitchen sink in — it’s a hootenanny! The album’s really not that great: There’s not that much cohesion, but the best songs are downright amazing, among the finest stuff they ever recorded. The almost-solo “Within Your Reach” showed that Westerberg was beginning to shove his creativity into the spotlight, recording this song just with drummer Chris Mars, and it’s really great/sad, about wanting someone but settling just to know them, the sound of longing crystallized in Westerberg’s final strained yelling of “I could live without your touch / If I could die within your reach.” A lot of the record is this weird attempt at a jazz/country/blues/punk hybrid that’s catchy and good but nothing really transcendent.
Key tracks: Within Your Reach, Color Me Impressed, Raised in the City

Let It Be (1984)

This is the “breakthrough” album, the one rock critics namedrop when the lists get made about best indie albums or just best albums, period. It’s a matured album, the best songs being the sad ones: the piano-tinkling gender dissection of “Androgynous” (about doubting your sexuality), the painful “Sixteen Blue” (written for sixteen-year old bassist Tommy Stinson by Westerberg) about being unsure of everything at that age, and the gut-wrenching “Answering Machine” about wanting someone who just won’t pick up the phone. But the majesty of this album is all in the first song, “I Will Dare,” full of optimism and spring with a bass line that hops along the floor and into your head, a solo from R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and a lovely little mandolin riff that would have been out of the question on Sorry Ma. The ‘Mats are still fucking around on this record with great song names like “Gary’s Got A Boner” and “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out”, but this is a grown-up record, or at least a record about wanting to grow up when no one else you know wants to. Classic.
Key tracks: I Will Dare, Unsatisfied, Answering Machine, Androgynous, 20th Century Boy (reissue)