All Shook Down by The Replacements

All Shook Down, released by Sire on September 25, 1990, was the Replacements' last studio album, and it very nearly wasn't a Replacements album at all. Paul Westerberg had planned it as his first solo record until his management talked him into putting the band's name on it before recording began. So it's crowded with session players and hired hands, with the other three Replacements, Tommy Stinson, Slim Dunlap and Chris Mars, in the mix around them. Westerberg later said four different drummers played on it, though no outside guitarists were brought in, and Stinson, who arrived about a week into the sessions, seems to have handled most of the bass. Scott Litt produced.

The sound matches the story: hushed, rueful and intimate, the work of a songwriter who had taken the reins. "Merry Go Round" is the one rock radio grabbed, a bittersweet, jangling spin, and "Someone Take the Wheel", "When It Began", "Happy Town", "My Little Problem", "Attitude", "Nobody" and the title track keep it company. "Sadly Beautiful" and "The Last" are as quiet and wounded as anything Westerberg ever wrote, the sound of a man writing with the end in sight.

Steve Foley took over the drums from Mars in 1990, and by 1991 the band was finished.

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