I should have saved this for a few reviews down the line this probably being my favourite album, but what the hell... in at the deep end.
Sebadoh is what ex-Dinosaur Jr. bassist Lou Barlow did when J. Mascis told him they were breaking up and reformed the next day with a new bassist and signed to Warner Brothers. It started off as a home-made project, just Lou, an acoustic guitar with 2 strings missing (and tuned like a ukelele) and a pair of cassette recorders. Understandably, a lot of the band's early material centres on that event (chiefly early single 'Asshole'), but mostly Lou wrote about awkward relationships, troubled friendships. Nick Drake with added tape hiss. Beautiful, plaintive, direct.
By 'Bakesale' Sebadoh had become a fully fledged electric band, Lou on Guitar and Vocals, Jason Lowenstein on Bass and Vocals and Bob Fay on drums. Live, they could be erratic, 20 minute tuning breaks, swapping instruments, stopping moshpits to prevent their weedier fans getting stepped on. Songwriting duties were shared pretty equally by this stage, but Lou's songs remain the focus. They bookend Bakesale, opening with 'License to Confuse' (a fizzing, garage-y tune in which Lou confesses to being 'a nervous little dick') and ending with 'Together Or Alone' (noble and bittersweet).
While earlier albums featured individual strokes of genius ('Brand New Love' on '...Vs Helmet', or 'Soul & Fire' on 'Bubble & Scrape'), Bakesale was where they got the perfect balance between cohesion and chaos. Like many American bands of the early to mid '90s, Sebadoh were briefly feted as 'The Next Nirvana', but they were more fragile, awkward and special than that. It's what Alicia Silverstone in Clueless would probably have called 'complaint rock'... but wonderfully so.
No comments:
Post a Comment