The Replacements- Let It Be (1984)

No, not the Beatles album, but the one by Paul Westerberg's splendid Minneapolis combo, very much a cult band here in Blighty but, quite rightly, a much bigger deal across the pond. This is their finest album, a deeply emotional scream of angst that anticipates the following decade and seems to rebel against what we (and contemporaries) imagine the '80s to be.

It's a glorious collection of songs. "Androgynous" may be very much ahead of its time in its treatment of what no one in 1984 would have referred to as non-binary gender identities, but it's also a cracking tune. "Black Diamond", a Kiss cover from left field, is exactly what a good cover ought to be: a total re-imagining of the original to produce an utterly different mood from the same song. And then, of course, we have the magnificent and anthemic "Unsatisfied", a song that still gets my pulses racing at the age of forty-two. The song may never appear on any of those "Alternative Eighties" compilation, but it deserves to stand for the decade.

A truly magnificent achievement, sadly nowhere near as well known in this country as it should be.