Review Revue: Soul Asylum - And the Horse They Rode In On

I have covered Soul Asylum in this space a couple of times before, but it's been almost exactly four years since the last time. I have had four years to dig back into the earlier, and I presume cooler, albums by this long-running Minneapolis alt-rock mainstay (They still exist! They put out a new album last year!), and yet I have still failed to pursue a proper appreciation of the band. I have to say, though, the comparisons by one reviewer (who I think is Kathy Fennessy?) to early Petty and Springsteen totally have me intrigued. It's also so much easier now than it was in 2013 to just go ahead and listen to an album you're curious about, so I'm pretty confident that by the next time I'm posting about Soul Asylum, I will have listened to And the Horse They Rode In On at least once. I know, alert the media.

"Hmmm... Ranges from pretty good to pretty poor. I thought 'Hang Time' was overall mediocre, and I think I like this less. Not much fire. 'Made to be Broken' remains for me their only above average LP. Wonder if they're still great live?"

"Why? (In other words - blah!)"

"Some of it rocks, some of it sounds like the Rolling Stones."

"Is that bad? [I'm with this reviewer; I don't quite see how "rocks" and "sounds like the Rolling Stones" are mutually exclusive.] I like this, but then again I like early Tom Petty ('American Girl') and Bruce Springsteen ('Candy's Room')... & that's what this LP reminds me of. [OK, I'm sold.] You know, really uncool, stripped down mid-70s guitar rock."

"Kathy, I love 'American Girl' + am still a Bruce fan (by the way, 'Candy's Room' isn't too early - 4th record) [hey, nice mansplaining!], but they - while being within the mainstream - had some fire. This just doesn't."