Prescription pop

Can Sebadoh cure what ails alterna-rock?

by Matt Ashare

"Hi! My name's Lou and I usually play a funky bass, but I'm going to be screaming my head off tonight," proclaims Lou Barlow in a mocking voice that's one part California hipster, two parts carnival barker. "You liked the Kids soundtrack? Well, good, here's nothing like it . . . "

If Barlow were on stage, then a club full of unwitting alterna-rock kids would be in for what might just be their most disappointing experience since Puck got booted from The Real World -- a raucous, disorganized, guitar-bashing performance by the Deluxx Folk Implosion. But it's Sunday afternoon and he's performing for an audience of just two -- myself and Sebadoh/DFI drummer Bob Fay, whose living room in Somerville we're all seated in. (Sebadoh bassist Jason Loewenstein is at home in Louisville.) In just a few days the new Sebadoh album Harmacy (Sub Pop; in stores August 20) will be delivered into the world that made the Kids track "The Natural One" a bona fide "Buzz Clip," and Barlow is doing one of the things he does best -- having a good laugh at his own expense.

He can afford it. The last Sebadoh disc, 1994's Bakesale (Sub Pop), made inroads on commercial radio without compromising the trio's status as one of the most fervently adored and posted-about indie-rock cult bands on the Internet. And if the "The Natural One," which he wrote and recorded with John Davis in a loose and even indier side project known as the Folk Implosion, didn't quite make Barlow a household name, it at least gave him some clout in the competitive world of modern-rock radio, which reaches more and more households every day.

Still, the band's de facto manager and self-described "returner of phone calls" is genuine in his self-doubt and pessimism about Sebadoh's commercial prospects. "The day that `The Natural One' debuted as a `Buzz Clip,' " he recalls, "we were setting up to record the first tracks for Harmacy at a house on Cape Cod. Suddenly this song that sounds nothing like the record we were about to make was a big hit. I mean, making a hit rock record is a lot different from tossing together a trip-hop dance song that hits. If you want to be a rock band with a big audience, you've got to have your whole texture down. You have to have that Smashing-Pumpkins-remixed-by-Andy-Wallace sound. If Sebadoh were to make an album that sounded like that, it would be so unnatural."

Barlow proceeds to do his best imitation of the modern-rock sound -- the explosive, high-impact kick-snare assault, the polished roar of overdriven guitars, the angst-ridden vocal delivery gushing with insincerity -- as applied to "Beauty of the Ride," one of Harmacy's prettier tracks.

"Yeah, man," Fay pipes in sarcastically, "but Weezer have really knocked open some doors for us."

"No," answers Barlow. "Even Weezer has that sound. Look, we don't have Marshall amps, we don't have Les Paul guitars. So forget about it. People with managers make that kind of music. Musicians make that kind of music. We're not musicians, and we don't have a manager. When I hear that they're going to be adding `Ocean' [the first single from Harmacy] at modern-rock stations, I think to myself, `Great but what the fuck is that going to mean?' I don't think that's going to do anything. I mean, no matter how many times you play a song like that on the radio, some guy riding in his fucking Jeep Cherokee isn't going to be like, `Hey man, this fucking makes me feel like turning it up and fucking rocking out!' It's not ass-kicking music."

Barlow's probably right about the guy in the Cherokee -- and his demographic comrades who were pumping their fists to the not-so-alterna-sounds of Soundgarden and Metallica this summer. Harmacy is the most confident and cohesive product of Sebadoh's decade-long career, a mission that began back when Barlow was still the bassist in Dinosaur Jr., as a way for him to blow off some steam with his eccentric pal Eric Gaffney. But even "Ocean," the disc's most accessibly rocking tune, isn't likely to generate much of a testosterone buzz, with its lilting vocal melody and wry, self-conscious lyrics like "I wish I had a way to make it better/To rearrange the world and make you smile/But it's dumb to even think I had that power/And we haven't been that close in a while."

Yeah, Barlow's still writing songs about the breakdown of friendships and romances, tightly crafted pop tunes that wrap heartbreakingly gorgeous melodies and scruffy guitar hooks around simple lyrics that telegraph a complex spectrum of passive-aggressive, self-reflective emotions. In fact, on Harmacy he proves himself to be a master of the form, which basically borrows the sensitive-guy singer/songwriter archetype from '70s icons like James Taylor and the pre-Africanized Paul Simon and updates it with some geeky attitude and a mildly ironic smirk. With lyrics like "Drive a wedge put your weight behind it/Get someone to help you out/Find that perfect way to keep you angry," "Perfect Way" reworks the theme of Simon's "Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover" without the glib wordplay.

"I think we've developed to the point where there's a particular sound or style that people can identify as `a Sebadoh sound,' " reasons Barlow. "I mean, Sebadoh songs are written with a strong verse/chorus/verse structure. It's not like anyone comes in and says, `Okay, let's jam on his riff for three hours and I'll try and figure out some lyrics for it the day before we record it.' For me, it's usually a song that you can play on acoustic guitar and that I've decided would sound good if it were buffed out with Fay drums and some Jake bass."

As basic as that may sound in theory, there's an immediacy to Barlow's songs that transcends even his own analysis. He hits personal, emotionally unsettling chords that conjure sadness and beauty, hope and despair, opening a window on an entire landscape of passions. With "Too Pure," one of the most arresting tracks on Harmacy, he articulates a sense of disconnection so poignantly that the waves of crashing guitar chords on the chorus wash away the aftertaste of false angst left behind by the latest alterna-hit. Even "Willing To Wait," a lovelorn plea to a former girlfriend that crests on the common enough line "I'm still in love with you and I only want to be with you," puts a fresh spin on an old pop-song subject, if only because Barlow's delivery seems so naked, and because he puts himself on the line by singing something as pathetic and honest as "I still have a lot to learn about me."

It's hard to be objective about a song like "Too Pure." Once it captures your imagination, once you've been tugged under the melodic current and submerged in its moody flow, its status as an artfully crafted pop gem seems almost beside the point. In transparent language Barlow articulates all the pain, confusion, and misplaced rage that Kurt Cobain repressed behind his wall of distortion and cryptic lyrics. It's enough to make you wonder what Barlow was doing playing second fiddle to J Mascis and to thank God that he finally got kicked out of Dinosaur Jr.

His songs anchor Harmacy. But Sebadoh is definitely not the Lou Barlow project -- that's Sentridoh, the moniker under which he's released his bedroom demos of Sebadoh songs. Since the third and final departure of founding drummer/songwriter/destabilizing influence Gaffney, which took place before the release of Bakesale, just over two and a half years ago, Sebadoh have evolved from a loose, eclectic circle of divergent songwriters into something resembling a traditional rock unit. The sonic, mid-fi consistency that was broached on Bakesale blossoms here, thanks in part to the emergence of Loewenstein as a songwriter with many of the same gifts as Barlow. Loewenstein's tunes tend to be thrashier than Barlow's. But his melancholic "Prince - S" is one of the best Barlow tunes that Barlow never wrote, and his more raucous contributions, including the punk rant "Love To Fight" and the unhinged garage-rocker "Mindreader," give the disc a nice loud/quiet, hard/soft balance.

Harmacy represents the first time Barlow, Loewenstein, and Fay -- or, for that matter, any Sebadoh formation -- have recorded a full album as an ensemble. They still trade instruments. Barlow plays guitar on his songs and bass on Loewenstein's. Loewenstein takes over on drums when Fay plays bass on Barlow's instrumental "Weed Against Speed" and "Perfect Way," as well as on his own instrumental "Sforzando!" Bob even takes his turn singing on a kick-ass version of the Bags' "I Smell a Rat."

They don't collaborate on songwriting. "It's just easier not to," Barlow explains. And they've yet to record a full album with one producer at one location. (Harmacy comes with a chart that outlines which tracks were recorded by the disc's three engineers, Fort Apache's Tim O'Heir and Wally Gagel and Dambuilders guitarist Eric Masunaga, at four different studios.) But this line-up has coalesced into something greater then the sum of its parts. You can hear that reflected in Barlow's willingness to underline, rather than undermine, the beauty of a song like "Willing To Wait" with lush, Mellotron strings.

And you can sense it in the back-and-forth banter about the band they've become. "We've finally done what some bands do the week they form," explains Barlow. "Some bands get a manager, start writing up postcards to give out at shows, and then they actually form."

"It's taken us seven records to get our publishing deal together," quips Fay, even though he's technically been a real Sebadoh member for only a couple of those discs.

"Yeah," Barlow responds, "but we were a band that really wasn't much of a band. We always had these songs and a reason to play. But we were never like" -- he switches into a rock-dude voice: "Man, we've got to get our set together so we can kick ass at the CMJ music convention next week!"

Fay takes the bait. "Man, I can't wait to do CMJ this year! It's going to be our big break!"

"Yeah," says Barlow, returning to his regular voice and only half-joking, "our big fucking fracture."