Lost Highway
2006
Open Season (Soundtrack)
About This Album
Paul Westerberg has been many things over the years and he was once notorious for being juvenile, but nothing he's done -- not the prime years of leading the Replacements when they were notorious for being the drunkest band in the land, not the cleaned-up singer/songwriter shining up his tunes for the Singles soundtrack, not the aimless aging cult icon of recent years -- ever suggested that he'd be the guy to provide songs for a CGI-animated film for kids. But Westerberg has long been a hero of many Gen-Xers who have long been determined to pay homage to their idol the way he saluted his own idol, Alex Chilton, by penning a song about him, so they've put him in movies -- sometimes covertly, like naming the high school in Heathers after him, or sometimes explicitly, like his prominent music in Singles, which sounded nothing like the rest of the grunge on the soundtrack. And so his songs for the 2006 animated film Open Season aren't necessarily something new -- it's more like the latest in a long line of attempts to break Paul Westerberg to a wider audience. It also fits into the 2000s trend of Gen-Xers making music for their kids now that they're parents themselves -- see Dan Zanes and They Might Be Giants, among others -- but where Zanes and TMBG cleverly spun their style, making music that appeals to kids and adults alike, Westerberg merely revives the sound of his early solo career, writing a set of songs that could have functioned as the sequel to 14 Songs.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,10 and 12)

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