Although they've released over a dozen albums covering four decades, odds are if you ask someone on the street to name a song by Soul Asylum, it's going to be the mega-hit "Runaway Train" off their 1992 album Grave Dancers Union. There were other singles, "Black Gold" and "Somebody To Shove" off Grave Dancers Union, "Misery" and "Just Like Anyone" off the follow-up Let Your Dim Light Shine, but those albums and songs represented a band that had worked and toured and recorded since the early 1980s, taking a primordial post-punk and hardcore sound and slowly evolving album by album, starting with their debut Say What You Will, Clarence...Karl Sold The Truck in 1984. Like their Twin/Tone Records labelmates The Replacements, the manic youthful energy gave their lead singers an opportunity to gradually find their literal and lyrical voice. On each successive album, and a jump to major label A&M, the band continued to refine and improve their brand of midwestern alternative college rock, and reached the heights of their songwriting prowess just as a second major, Columbia, took a chance that would land them a home for their sixth album and eventual double platinum seller, the aforementioned Grave Dancers Union.

 

Songs In This Episode

Intro - Down On Up To Me (from Hang Time)

22:24 - Voodoo Doll (from Say What You Will, Clarence...Karl Sold The Truck)

28:36 - Masquerade (from Say What You Will, Clarence...Karl Sold The Truck)

33:16 - Tied to the Tracks (from Made To Be Broken)

36:46 - Can't Go Back (from Made To Be Broken)

40:20 - Freaks (While You Were Out)

47:22 - Endless Farwell (Hang Time)

51:30 - Cartoon (Hang Time)

Outro - Closer To The Stars (While You Were Out)

 

Support the podcast, join the DMO UNION at Patreon.

Listen to the episode archive at DigMeOutPodcast.com.