Album Review: Folker by Paul Westerberg

Freed from the pressures of major-label record making and finally linked with a well-connected indie where he's allowed to follow his muse on his own terms, Paul Westerberg has been wildly prolific (at least by his standards) since hooking up with Vagrant Records in early 2002, releasing five albums (two as Grandpaboy) recorded in his home studio in less than three years. However, Folker suggests that the problems that dogged Westerberg's solo work for Reprise and Capitol haven't entirely escaped him -- namely, his songwriting doesn't have the same consistent spark it had in his salad days. In many respects, Folker sounds like a more muscular variation on 2002's Stereo, which found Westerberg examining his more introspective side, and if this set finds him more willing to lay on the sloppy drums and electric guitars, he's still talking adult stuff -- love, marriage, death -- rather than the post-adolescent traumas of the Replacements.

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