During winter break after my first semester of college I asked the Program Director at the college radio station to tell me his pick for the best album of the year. He paused and thought about it, clearly not as trained as I was (by the nefarious influence of Rolling Stone) to always have a clear, decisive response at the ready whenever the opportunity arose to rank the offerings of pop culture. Eventually he answered “Soul Asylum’s Hang Time.” This caught me by surprise. I’d fiercely studied the handful of “best of” lists that were available during that era–what a different landscape we survey now–and that release was nowhere to be found among the Greens, Daydream Nations and lives of overabundant quality that populated other tallies. So I asked him why that was his choice for the best of the year. He answered succinctly, inelegantly and accurately. “Because it kicks ass.”

Soul Asylum occupies an odd place in the canon of college rock. They were, by almost any assessment, the weakest of the Minneapolis triumvirate led by The Replacements and Husker Du, but they achieved greater commercial success than either of those older, tougher brothers. And now they seem to stand as forgotten and ridiculed, with few people willing to stand up and cite them as a solid band in their time. They never crafted masterpiece albums (and they had the misfortune to follow their breakthrough with a pretty rotten effort) but their was fine, meaty rock and roll in the grooves of their vinyl. In some respects, they may have been miscast as members of alternative nation. Their chunky guitar solidity probably would have fit better on the classic rock and album rock stations. At least if the stations utilizing those formats weren’t so skittish about expanding their music libraries to new but appropriate sounds.

As with many of these discarded bands, the music is worth revisiting if you know where to listen. An occasional blast of earnest guitar can sound quite nice.

Soul Asylum, “Heavy Rotation”

(Disclaimer: Hang Time looks exceedingly out of print to me. Two of its best songs can be found on the inevitable and uninspiring “best of” collection, but my brief detective work unearthed no means to exchange American dollars with the band or their various record labels to procure a copy of the song selected today. Despite this, if someone with due authority asks me to remove this from the Interweb that is precisely what I will do.)