After an acrimonious split from Dinosaur Jr, bassist Lou Barlow teamed up with ‘musical terrorist’ Eric Gaffney and formed Sebadoh, one of the defining forces of the early 90’s lo-fi scene. Jason Loewenstein was later incorporated into the line up and Sebadoh then went on to release an album, III, that contained both the homemade feel of their earlier albums and the bigger studio sound they were lazily gravitating towards.
III is a sonic rough and tumble with frenetic mini-instrumentals, lo-fi acoustica, tape hiss, buzzing guitar strings and sweetly melancholic melodies (such as in the lovely Total Peace).
It kicks off with Freed Pig which appears at first to be a self-flagellating apology to Dinosaur Jr – “You were right” Barlow begins – but which contains a sting in the tail that turns it into an ode to freedom “[Now Barlow’s gone] Your big head will have more room to grow.”
Vocals are occasionally reminiscent of the Dinosaurs in that notes are held the way a tight rope walker wobbles without falling, and the cool relentless strumming that is primitive and hypnotic at the same time is there, but Sebadoh seem more rough edged and eclectic on III, and more inclined to walk along musical ledges with a stoned abandon.
The monster in Sebadoh occasionally surfaces, sometimes in the middle of quieter tracks such as Scars, Four Eyes whose fabric, sown together by Cure-like bass runs, is ripped through by roared vocals. And there are bursts of punk rock, weed-obssessed slow jazz ramblings and mid-tempo grunge/New Wave numbers, and yet again and again the album settles down to a more intimate wash of sung poems over cheap guitars and improvised percussion.
Twenty three songs and with the rerelease a second disc with a further eighteen tracks. Messy, sprawling and pretty cool.