Soul Asylum

It might be said that Soul Asylum is just a wonderful rock �n� roll band from Minneapolis, a rough and ready quartet embodying explosive energy, sloppy charm, and a reserve of musical and lyrical sophistication that instantly distinguishes them from the vast majority. You could simplemindedly compare them to the Replacements and Husker Du—also young Minneapolitans who began just this side of hardcore—and contemplate the mystical correlation between plaid clothing and musical excellence. Or you could get all analytical and try explaining why these four guys, none yet 25, are providing the ideal audio antidote to the superficialty of hairdo lame-os, the tedium of rote dance machines, and the pernicious fradulence of grungy pseudopatriots. Maybe it�s just that Soul Asylum has the distinct (perhaps unfair) advantage of intelligence and sincerity, coupled with a no-nonsense attitude about career achievement without selling out.

To put things in a semi-sociological context, the gene pool which spawned many of this sad decade�s great American bands developed around 15 years ago with countless nearing-teen tykes stewing their pubescent musical juices in the primordial mid-�70s glamrock oozepot of the Faces, Mott The Hoople, Slade, Aerosmith and Sweet. Kids who came of playing age in that brief era when glitterglam�s last trivial vestiges slunk away in shame as the younger, faster, louder,