This coming January, Bash & Pop returns with Anything Could Happen, its first record since its 1993 debut, Friday Night Is Killing Me. Frontman Tommy Stinson just unveiled the video for the album’s first single.
“On The Rocks” finds the 50-year-old rock ‘n’ roller in fine form, and just as snotty as he was when he started playing bass with those older boys in the ’Mats. Featuring stinging, Johnny Thunders-influenced guitars, clever, smart-aleck wordplay (“Your broken father made a token mother…”) and chord changes inspired by his surrogate big brother Paul Westerberg, “Rocks” oozes that sort of romantic Midwestern swagger that the boys from Minneapolis know best:
While band leader Tommy Stinson is the only returning Bash & Pop member, the former Replacement didn’t think it was fair to call Anything Could Happen a solo record. “Since recording my last two solo records in a rather piecemeal way, I found myself longing to make a record in the same way that we made the early Replacements records: live, in the studio, as a band,” Stinson revealed earlier this year. “Since early 2015, I’ve been recording new songs with new and old friends, cutting all of them as live as possible without losing too much fidelity or over-thinking the songs. Recording live with a band is the only way I know this to be done.”
In lieu of the return of Steve Brantseg, Kevin Foley, and Steve Foley, the new Bash & Pop lineup features members of The Hold Steady, Guns N’ Roses, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Screeching Weasel.
The new album will be released on Fat Possum records early next year; in recent years, the label began primarily as a blues label in 1992, and started adding more traditional rock ‘n’ roll artists, like The Black Keys and Iggy and the Stooges, that appeal to the aging record store clerk in all of us. Stinson’s fellow Replacement Paul Westerberg even released a blues-influenced garage rock record, Dead Man Shake, on the label in 2003 under his Grandpaboy moniker.
Anything Could Happen will be in stores on January 20, 2017, and can be pre-ordered at Stinson’s Pledge Music site. Stinson is also auctioning off bits and pieces of his broken bass guitars, signed merchandise, and the chance to shoot dirty pool with the band on the site.
Bash & Pop—Anything Could Happen
1. Not This Time
2. On The Rocks
3. Anything Could Happen
4. Breathing Room
5. Anybody Else
6. Can’t Be Bothered
7. Bad News
8. Never Wanted To Know
9. Anytime Soon
10. Unfuck You
11. Jesus Loves You
12. Shortcut