New Music Review

Paul Westerberg
PW & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys
Digital Download EP










Back in July of 2008, Paul Westerberg surprised and excited his longtime fans by coming out with download-only album (or song, depending on your perspective) called 49:00 of your life. In my opinion, it was excellent, although a bit off the beaten path. If nothing else, it gave lots of hope to us die-hards that there would be more new material coming. And for a minute, there was. He released a companion piece called "5:05" to supplement 49:00, and then sporadically released a couple songs here and there for the duration of the year, including three songs released right around Christmas. This was the first real burst of creativity we had seen out of Paul since he badly injured his fretting hand in late 2006. We were optimistic that there would be more stuff on the horizons; albums (digital download or otherwise), shows, tv appearances, whatever.

We got nothing. There has been no news on the Westerberg front in all of 2009. Until now. Finally.

When I got wind that Westerberg had released a download-only EP through Amazon at the low, low price of $3.89, I immediately purchased it. PW & the Ghost Glove Cat Wing Joy Boys is a six song EP that most fans would probably describe as something that sounds a lot like the stuff he's released under the moniker of Grandpaboy. It's pretty lo-fi, rough, raw, and as usual, it's rather good. All six songs on this release are worth listening to. The best song on it, "Drop them Gloves" is a classic Stones/Faces-style blues rocker, and Paul has always been able to do that better than most. The worst song on it is the piano-driven "Love on the Wing", and even when that starts to get boring, the lyrics are too clever to make you want to hit the skip button. The other four songs are somewhere in between; mostly a cross between the later Grandpaboy sounds of Dead Man Shake and some of the better stuff of of Folker. I'm really glad to be in possession of a new Westerberg release. It's about fuckin' time.

One could only hope that Paul starts working on a new album soon and then go on tour to support it. One could also hope that this album would be released through conventional methods. Furthermore, one could really hope that Paul hires a band to back him in the studio, or at the very least hire a real drummer, because playing the drums is something that Paul does not do well, and you can generally count on that being the downside of these DIY basement recordings he puts out. One could hope. If that's not in the cards, I'll take all the stuff like this I can get. Ultimately, however, this just leaves me wanting more and wondering what if...