Angst.

Now there’s a word I haven’t used in awhile.

There was a time when I used it quite frequently, because it so perfectly encapsulated my overall state of mind, but angst seldom comes out of my mouth these days, except in an ironic, self-deprecating way. Much like old flannel shirts, wanting to study philosophy and sleeping until 2 in the afternoon, I associate angst with being a clueless undergraduate. By the time I graduated from college and was forced to confront some unpleasant questions, such as what I was going to do with my life and where I might find a job, angst just didn’t seem cool. Like maybe I had other things to ponder besides my creeping sense of existential dread.

I guess you could say that I outgrew angst, or at least my preoccupation with it. Having watched friends struggle with serious mental health issues, I no longer romanticize depression and anxiety, as a lot of young writers do. And you know what? Being happy, I’ve discovered, is kind of fun. But there is one area of life where I still like a bit of angst, and that’s in my CD collection, which has evolved quite a bit since college but still reflects my college tastes. Back then, of course, my favorite bands were all about angst.

My favorite band of all time is The Replacements, the seminal 1980s garage-punk band that was notorious (I was going to say famous, but that might be stretching it) for getting drunk during live performances and trashing things. On my favorite Replacements album, “Let it Be,” snotty punk songs like “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” alternate with heartfelt rock and roll songs like “Unsatisfied,” where lead singer and songwriter Paul Westerberg sings, in a voice both mournful and defiant, “Look me in the eye/And tell me that I’m satisfied. ... I’m so, I’m so unsatisfied.” It’s juvenile and self-absorbed, but it’s a feeling almost anybody can relate to, at some point in their life. Every Replacements album contains lines like that, lines that are simultaneously sad and angry and confused, and it now occurs to me that in his heyday Westerberg may well have been the King of Angst.

The Replacements broke up in 1990, and Westerberg sobered up and began putting out solo albums filled with literate, well-crafted pop/rock tunes. None of these albums can hold a candle to the great work of The Replacements, and I think it’s because Westerberg stopped drinking and settled down. I’m happy for him, and he remains one of my heroes (my cat, Paul, is named after him), but I’ve stopped buying his solo albums, which are nice, but tend to sound the same and lack the crazy self-destructive energy of The Replacements.

Last week a friend e-mailed to ask if I was aware that Westerberg had released a new album, “49:00,” available for 49 cents as an MP3 download. I was not aware, and decided to download the album at once. I’ve listened to it several times. It’s good, ragged and raw, but it goes without saying that it’s not as good as The Replacements, despite lines that sound like vintage Replacements, such as “Everyone’s stupid in the classroom, even our friends.” I’m not sure what this means, but I relate to it, because it seems to sum up some basic truth about my waking life, much like this great lyric from an early Replacements song: “Everybody at your party/They don’t look depressed/And everybody’s dressin’ funny/Color me impressed.” This line comes to mind whenever I’m at a large social gathering and everyone starts to annoy me, which happens more often than I should probably admit.

There’s angst on “49:00,” but it comes sporadically, in bits and pieces. My theory is that Westerberg’s solo work would be a whole lot better if it contained more angst, and this album is no exception. In an e-mail, my friend Geoff summed up some of my feelings. “[‘49:00’] has some nice moments,” he wrote. “But mostly it shows how hard it is to be an aging rocker. His finest artistic moments were so, so young. ... I still think Paul is cool, but I feel bad for him.”

Unlike Geoff, I don’t feel bad for Paul. He seems to be in a better frame of mind these days. The fact is, angst doesn’t age well, which explains why many rock bands peak when they’re young, and why I’m always a little embarrassed whenever I think about my sophomore year of college. But angst is also timeless, because everyone feels alone and misunderstood sometimes. On those occasions, I just throw in an old Replacements CD.