Better Things: Here Comes a Regular

"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.

We're getting deep into the list at this point, hitting songs and bands that I keep being surprised that I didn't fit them into the original This Year series. (But that's the point: any list is limited, and leaves a lot off - there's always more good stuff than any one list can contain.)

For this week, it's The Replacements, who were the best band in the world, at least intermittently, one night here and there, for a while in the '80s. And, again, there's all the other songs that almost took this place - The Ledge most obviously, though loving that song, forty years later, might be holding onto something far too teenagery. But there's also their awesome covers: the goofy strut of Cruella DeVille and the breakneck thrill of Another Girl, Another Planet. The song that came second - and was knocked out mostly on points, since it's an alternate version that came out much later and I didn't hear until the 00s - was I Can't Hardly Wait (The Tim Version).

But for the 'Mats song I loved at the time and kept listening to for years, it has to be the boozy, depressive Here Comes a Regular.

Well a person can work up a mean mean thirst
After a hard day of nothin' much at all

It's got some of Paul Westerberg's best lyrics: precise, true, world-weary, knowing, allusive.

Opportunity knocks once then the door slams shut
All I know is I'm sick of everything that my money can buy

And it's one of the saddest, bleakest songs I know. I don't know what it says about me that I gravitate to that kind of song, but this is one of the best, the truest.

I used to live at home, now I stay at the house