Slim Dunlap – Times Like This
There’s this country ditty near the end of Times Like This called “Nowheres Near”. It tells the story of a band that hasn’t been noticed after “20 fucking years.” The band is having tryouts to replace the bassist, axed for being too sarcastic. “Well we’re holding this stupid audition,” sings the wheezy-voiced Dunlap. “Some little kid asks if this is all we did?” You can just picture the kid, dressed ’90’s post-grunge, bass in tow, oblivious to the grown-up world, immune to the concept that most bands never get anywhere. Period. That’s where day jobs come in. So, no, kid, this isn’t all we do.
Dunlap’s not quite the defeated dreamer as most. He did taste a tiny morsel of widespread recognition with the Replacements and has been a regular on the Minneapolis scene for years. He’s a rock ‘n’ roll survivor, one of the thousands of talented bottom-feeders with enough of a hunger and enough of a lack of vocational skills to keep playing that Les Paul until the day he dies. This sentiment is what fuels Times Like This and its ragged, rickety mesh of Keith Richards-style rock, strummy country and bar-band slop.
Sometimes his assessments are a bit too obvious — the greatest hook to “Radio Hook Word Hit” is the line “I need a radio hook” — but some subtlety elsewhere strikes deeper chords. On the tender, shufflin’ “Hate This Town”, Dunlap dreams that working in the hardware store in the hometown he abandoned might have actually been a pretty good life. And on the breezy title track, Dunlap yearns that it’s “times like this, that we learn what we really miss.”
If only such wisdom and introspection paid the rent.