The challenge facing most reunited bands is simple: play your greatest hits with enough sincerity to convince the audience you’re enjoying it, get out of the venue and collect the money. For the Replacements, making their first visit to Europe in almost a quarter of a century, it’s rather different. Their legend has been built on tales of drunken disaster, of shows that turned into car crashes, of being the band that threw it all away.
Which means fans turning up for their Back By Unpopular Demand tour don’t want a pristine run-through of the nearly-hits: yes, they want to hear their favourite songs done justice, but they want evidence the band could flame out at any minute, too.
It’s a highwire act, and the group – original Replacements Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, joined by guitarist Dave Minehan and drummer Josh Freese – tread it expertly. When they need to sound good, they are impeccable – taut and flab-free, a rock’n’roll band doing absolute justice to Westerberg’s bruised, defiant anthems of youthful ennui. The songs the crowd want to sing along to – Alex Chilton, Bastards of Young, Can’t Hardly Wait, Left of the Dial – are delivered with a scything attack that’s breathtakingly exciting. In fact, the revelation of the show is hearing a back catalogue that appears on record with varying degrees of erratic production performed with uniform commitment.
But, equally, there are enough moments in the set to let everyone go home saying they saw the Replacements and they nearly fell to pieces. A version of the Hank Williams hit Lost Highway stumbles to a halt after a verse, Westerberg giggling, before restarting. After the singer calls for requests, then notes he’ll be waiting for one that appears on the setlist, he leads the band into a version of Talent Show that requires a false start and a key change before it can get going.
How committed Westerberg is to this reunion is open to question. On the back of his T-shirt tonight is scrawled the letter “S”, which when added to T-shirt messages in recent shows spells out: “I have always loved you. Now I must whore my pas” – the smart money being that a “T” would be appearing on his shirt at the second Roundhouse show on 3 June. But he doesn’t coast through the set: the sight of Westerberg, Stinson and Linehan opening the show with a four-song run harking back to the band’s hardcore beginnings, legs spread wide and guitars slung low, is a thrilling one, and he is engaged with both audience and band throughout.
He saves the heartbreak – for all the Replacements’ reputation as rock’n’roll wildmen, their greatest strength was Westerberg’s lovelorn ballads – for the end, with a scintillating version of Unsatisfied. “Look me in the eye and tell me that I’m satisfied,” he yowls. Three thousand people sing back. They sound awfully satisfied.
• At the Roundhouse, London, on 3 June. Box office: 0300-6789 222.
