Saturday, August 29, 2009

Don't apologize

I just discovered this powerful new song by Lou Barlow and have to share it. It's from his forthcoming album Goodnight Unknown.



For those of you that are unfamiliar with Barlow, he was bassist in the legendary band Dinosaur Jr. in the late 1980s and later led his own bands Sebadoh and Folk Implosion... you may vaguely remember Folk Implosion's big hit in the mid 1990s, "Natural One".

Barlow left Dinosaur Jr. under bitter circumstances and was very public in bashing the singer, J. Mascis -- who is a formidible indie rock legend in his own right. So, it was pretty unexpected when the old Dino Jr. lineup reunited a few years ago and played a very successful tour. I was lucky enough to see them myself back in 2007 at the Westword Music Showcase downtown.

Lou Barlow's music is usually pretty melancholy but there's something anthemic and profound about it that makes it better than your average indie rock. Sebadoh's 6th album, 1994's Bakesale was part of the soundtrack of my early 20s. It ages so well 15 years later. I'm happy to see that Lou's still going strong and still making great music! I think I'm going to go and listen to Bakesale now...

2 comments:

Tankfos said...

I really liked that. I wasn't sure what the praying mantis was all about. :)

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Matthew said...

Yeah, the video is kind of silly. Something about aliens? Everybody guffaws when they see that cheesy flying saucer. And then the drummer adjusts his hat at the end of the first chorus... way to play to the camera dudes. Oh well it's just indie rockers acting like they don't care, as usual.

But the song... my god, but this is a gorgeous song! It's very, very powerful and one of the best new songs I've heard this year. I'm itching to buy the album but it doesn't come out until next month.