The Replacements’ 1981 debut captures the Minneapolis miscreants in their primordial drunk-punk glory. Stuffing 18 songs into 36 minutes, Sorry Ma is a breathless barrage of sloppy, Ramones-style rave-ups that teeter on the edge of hardcore. But in the midst of the melee, you can hear Paul Westerberg’s sardonic sensibility emerge on meta-commentaries like “I Hate Music” (“It’s got too many notes!”). And on the brooding outlier “Johnny’s Gonna Die,” we get an early glimpse of his burgeoning flair for sobering character studies.
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