Sebadoh “Defend Yourself”
Before Grunge’s flannel and before Hip Hop’s hoodies, the Indie Rock ensemble involved faded khakis, a washed out tee and, ideally, a thrift store cardigan. Hair was bedheaded and short if you were a fan with a job to keep, but long and inscrutable if you were a real one — if your job was merely what you did in between gigs. That look — part Northeast Cat Guy, part Northwest Librariancore — was perfected by Kurt Cobain during “Nirvana Unplugged.” Kurt won the look. But he did not invent the look.
Neither did Elliott Smith, who could have donned the cardigan and let his hair grow out, but who leaned more hoodie than sweater and more greasy than tousled. Additionally, and like Kurt, Elliott did not wear glasses — an optional but extremely useful accessory that brought the whole look together. For those of us coming of age in the Nineties, this uniform— tee plus cardigan plus glasses plus hair — was iconic. Overeducated young professionals slash collectors of seven inches. Grad school teacher assistants slash bedroom guitarists. We can picture the guy — probably several of those guys. And yet, decades removed, his origins feel a bit murky. He’s a stereotype that postdates the early Eighties — after REM and The Replacements — but predates the early Nineties — before Pavement and Built to Spill.
And so who is the bespectacled, shaggy, collegiate dude with his sweater undone? The guy who predicted Kurt and manifested Elliott? It’s Lou Barlow, of course. The Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Sentridoh and Folk Implosion founder was the picture of late-Eighties-early-Nineties Indie Rock. And as much as he was the picture, he was also the sound of it. Hushed vocals set way back. Lyrics torn straight from diary pages. Four track, sub-low fidelity bedroom Pop meets bass shaking, treble rattling Punk Rock. Smart. Desperate. Ecstatic. Needy. Sad. Angry. Cardiganed. Lou Barlow was the archetype. Without him there’s probably no Nirvana and there’s definitely no Elliott Smith.
If Lou Reed was the first and the alpha, then Lou Barlow was the distant second and the beta “Lo-Fi Lou.” With Sebadoh, Barlow invented the kind of work in progress, kind of perfect as it is style that Guided by Voices and Olivia Tremor Control soon perfected. With Sentridoh, he invented an even quieter, decidedly un-punk alter ego that Iron & Wine and The Microphones cribbed notes from. And before all that, of course, was Dinosaur Jr., where Barlow’s Cardigan Cat Guy guise debuted (writer’s note: I have no idea whether Lou Barlow is actually a cat guy but that’s besides the point). Yes — before Kurt Unplugged, before Elliott at The Oscars, and way before Taylor’s Tortured Poets Department — Lou Barlow was whispering the way.
From 1984 through 1989, as the co-founding bassist for Dinosaur Jr., Barlow’s torturer was also his bandmate. J. Mascis was the too talented, too weird and too cool to give a fuck leader to Barlow’s too sensitive, too introverted and too confused to fight follower. By almost everyone’s account, and especially by Michael Azerrad’s in “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” Barlow’s impishness was surpassed only by the eye-rolling animus of his frontman frenemy. Mascis was the talent — the songwriter, the prodigy, the guy — while Barlow was the completely supporting character. Dinosaur Jr. was an autocracy wherein the singer-guitarist ruled with few words while the bassist (and drummer) mumbled “yes” when commanded and “sorry” when they erred. Their collective aggressive passivity is canon.
And it worked. It worked because Mascis was a talented dictator. It worked because he was self-possessed. And it worked because he did not seem to care what anyone else — including (especially) his bandmates — seemed to think. But mostly it worked because Lou Barlow allowed it to work. He endured the passive aggression and the aggressive aggression. He set aside his guitar and practiced his bass. He did not fight for his own songs.
Barlow survived the tyranny by recording quietly (and occasionally loudly) in his bedroom and creating a separate band for his own musical coming of age. That band — Sebadoh — was the opposite of Dinosaur Jr. Whereas his former band had one mode — Country Music played by a Punk who could not sing but who did not care — Sebadoh had two diametrically opposed modes — hushed and noisy. Where Dinosaur Jr. was a trio, Sebadoh was (initially) a duo. And where Dinosaur Jr. was a monarchic, Sebadoh was democratic. With Sebadoh, Barlow had the opportunity to right wrongs and find his own voice away from Mascis’ judgment.
As it turned out, Sebadoh was also a really important Indie Rock band. Sebadoh made lo-fi Indie Rock — recorded on four tracks, very intentionally without polish. They could sound like one guy and his guitar recording on a tape recorder or like three guys plugged into the same amp, rocking out and melting down. Whereas there was always a precision to Mascis’ looseness, Barlow sounded unsure — even when his compositions were completely assured. Sebadoh’s “unediting” was more than just a sonic aesthetic, it was a politic. If a member of the band wrote a song and liked a song, it was released. The first three Sebadoh records each contained more than twenty tracks. Barlow would quietly lead, but he would not dictate.
And if Lou had an idea for a song that did require his bandmates, he’d release it under an alter ego. If it was stripped to its bones, he‘d put it out as Sentridoh. If it had a groove, he’s make it with John Davis as The Folk Implosion. Barlow’s lo-fi, high volume, small scale, big feelings records inspired everything from Elliott Smith to Guided by Voices. Meanwhile the power trio of Barlow, Lowenstein and Gaffney was ground zero for everyone from Modest Mouse to Built to Spill.
By the end of the last millennium, Barlow was establishment — an Indie Rock icon with a near major label contract (Sire) who’d semi-crossed over. To the outside, he was older and wiser. But inside, he was still the same guy, wearing his heart on his sleeve while hiding behind his hair. Simultaneously, he was buckling under the weight of all that context switching — from Sebadoh to Sentridoh to the Folk Implosion. Being the opposite of J. Mascis meant being “good” and “fair” which meant sharing songwriting duties with Lowenstein and Gaffney in Sebadoh and Davis in Folk Implosion. Egalitarian partnerships sounds peachy in theory, but in practice they are brutally hard. Especially when you are the best songwriter in the group — as Mascis was in his band and Barlow was in all of his bands.
Which is why, in the Aughts, Barlow made three sensible, if unexpected, changes: (1) he broke up his bands, (2) he started releasing solo material and, most unthinkably, (3) he reunited with J. Mascis. Twenty-first century Lou Barlow was the picture of middle-aged Indie Rock. The beard. The glasses. The gray. The spare tire. Back together with Murph and Mascis, Lou resumed his role as the bassist who got two songwriting credits per album. And for a few years, everything seemed right — or at least just — in Barlowtown. But then, life intervened. After more than twenty years of marriage, Lou and his (first) wife divorced. Around the same time, feeling the pinch of Dinosaur Jr. and the loneliness of solo work, Barlow did the obvious thing — he got back together with Jason Lowenstein and reformed Sebadoh.
“Defend Yourself” is the eighth Sebadoh studio album and the first in almost fifteen years. Recorded in the shadow of divorce and the glare of the Dinosaur Jr. sequel, it is also an album of rebirth. Barlow’s union with Jason Lowenstein had endured, through thick and thin, for more than two decades. Simultaneously, as the door closed on Barlow’s first marriage, another opened into new love which would beget a new union and new life. Caught somewhere between fight, flight and fount, “Defend Yourself” is a series of reactions — of responding to guilt, reacting to conflict, saying the things that must be said and discovering the consequences. It is not an angry or aggressive record. But as the title suggests, it is a defensive record — not at all petty, but fully self-protective.
The combination of the two — defensiveness and in-betweenness — necessarily subverts resolution. Elliott Smith can win wounded or lost or both, but Rock bands are not singer songwriters. Rock bands succeed with cogency and revelation. And Sebadoh is absolutely a band. In his pursuit of not becoming J. Mascis, frequently ceded control to his bandmates. Which, by 2013, meant that Lou contributed less than half of the album’s material. Six for him. Six for Lowenstein. And one (instrumental) for drummer Bob D’Amico. Formally and functionally, “Defend Yourself” is an album of halves and responses.
Unfortunately, the Lowenstein half (technically 46.2%) is the much lesser half. Sebadoh’s bassist lacks Barlow’s gift for melody and while his voice is serviceable, it is just barely so. At its worst (“Inquiries”), Lowenstein makes heavier and more muscular, but truly generic, Indie Rock. When he is at the wheel, Sebadoh sounds like a thousand bands you’ve heard before and have since forgotten — bands that might have opened for Sebadoh. Even on his best song (“Can’t Depend”), when he’s reaching for the hazy Americana of Grandaddy, Lowenstein sounds uncomfortable. As contrast to Barlow, a couple of these songs might provide benefit. But in an even split, they feel like democracy instead of meritocracy.
Fortunately, there are also six Barlow tracks — including one excellent song (“I Will”), two very good ones (“Oxygen” and “Listen”) and three solid numbers. This is what Sebadoh fans come for — Cardigan Cat Guy tuning the feelings. At his best, Barlow sounds brave and beautiful. But, he is ultimately lesser than the great lo-fi troubadours that he inspired. If he were more self-possessed, more domineering — more like J. Mascis — maybe Lou would have become Elliott Smith or Sufjan Stevens and maybe Sebadoh would have become Built to Spill or Modest Mouse. But also, maybe there would be no Dinosaur Jr. reunion because there would have been no time or need for it. And also, maybe we’d never have gotten “Brand New Love” and “Soul and Fire.” So maybe thank heavens for his sensitivity and his passivity and his glasses and cardigans. J. Mascis serf was Elliott Smith’s savior.