Soul Asylum at the Paramount

When I was in college, it was hard not to turn on MTV and see a Soul Asylum video being played. I got to see the band three times in St. Cloud about a decade after their heyday. With the 2005 death of their bass guitarist Karl Mueller from throat cancer, the band's appearances have been limited, so when I heard they were returning to St. Cloud to play at the Paramount Theatre last Saturday, I decided to attend to see how much had changed.

The band had just released their new CD, Delayed Reaction, that week, the band's first disc in six years. The show started with the first song from the new disc, "Gravity," an uptempo pop-rock song that got the crowd's attention. It was good to see frontman Dave Pirner and guitarist Dan Murphy back in action, alongside new drummer Michael Bland, Winston Roy filling in for ex-Replacements bassists Tommy Stinson, and Thomas Barbarella on keyboards. Even Mueller was there in spirit, as the drum head facing the crowd was a picture of him covered in mayonnaise, paint and other gooey substances from the cover of the band's 1989 EP Clam Dip and Other Delights.

The band had just played two shows in Minneapolis the previous two nights, one on Thursday at the 7th Street Entry and one on Friday at First Avenue's main room. Pirner admitted to the crowd that he was in a much better mood at the Paramount, and even shrugged off forgetting some of the lyrics to their single "Misery."

The band played about ten songs, took a twenty-minute intermission (one of the band's first intermissions in its history, according to Pirner), then returned for another ten songs. The house lights barely went down before the group returned to the stage for five encore songs, all festive and faithful covers of songs by other artists, including a fiesty rendition of Steve Miller's "Space Cowboy."

Althought the band didn't play too many of their classic hits, it was good to hear some of the newer songs interspersed with the familiar tracks "Black Gold," "Somebody to Shove," "Stand Up and Be Strong" and "Runaway Train."

I wasn't familiar with any of the new music, so I made a point to pick up the new disc after the show. As I familiarized myself with the ten power pop songs on Delayed Reaction, I remembered how everyone at the show was enjoying the performance, and hoped that the band would make another return to the historic theater.