News / / 21.10.13

SEBADOH

Scala, London | October 16th

Oddly enough, it’s actually rather difficult to be too verbose about Sebadoh, despite the band’s quietly extensive legacy. Archetypal indie rock journeymen, their appeal – aside from the fucking great tunes – lies in their consistent lack of frills, a workaday stoicism remarkable for its unremarkableness. 

In Lou Barlow they have a fascinating lynchpin; originally the browbeaten wingman to J Mascis’s surly auteur in Dinosaur Jr, he instigated Sebadoh as a necessarily lo-fi creative outlet before the first, seminal iteration of that band imploded three classic records in. He eventually wrote several perfect full-lengths of scratchy, genre-defining rock music as good as anything their peers and contemporaries in Guided By Voices, Archers of Loaf or (whisper) Pavement put out in the course of the late 1980s and 90s. Lighter on the histrionics and heavier on minor key catharsis than Dino, the three piece – Eric Gaffney on skins (now replaced by Fiery Furnaces alumnus Bob D’Amico, and Barlow variously sharing songwriting, bass and guitar duties with Jason Lowenstein – came to typify the slacker aesthetic and sound prevalent of those decades, in equal terms both more raw than the barroom pop-classicism of Robert Pollard’s GBV and more insularly evocative than the smallscreen sensitivity of groups like Buffalo Tom.

After a 13-year creative hiatus, occasional touring notwithstanding, the trio have returned to writing (a fact Barlow waxes sweetly on this evening). Both 2012’s Secret EP and this year’s Defend Yourself could slot pretty easily in to any part of Sebadoh’s oeuvre, but it says something that recent single I Will is chosen as an opener. Intensely melodic and sighingly resigned even for Barlow – is there a better example of a pure vision of worn–out-old-man indie rock than the song’s video? – it’s a downbeat way to kick off, especially given the band’s ambling entrance and laconic introductions.

Still, exuberant grandstanding never having been Sebadoh’s strong suit anyway, the set picks up quickly. Weighing on selections from the classics Bakesale and Harmacy, it’s almost galling just how good Barlow and Lowenstein’s songwriting is, with only the Secret cut Keep The Boy Alive a momentary dip in energy. Live, it becomes particularly apparent how underused Lowenstein is; he’s effectively a more successful Spiral Stairs, both a better vocalist and guitarist than his shaggy, poster-boy bandmate. His Careful and Not Too Amused comprise, with the penultimate rendition of Harmacy opener On Fire, a triumvirate of set highlights, that track’s timeless, lilting alt-country inflections the introspective foil to Lowenstein’s more ragged expounding. It’s tough to think of a more salient example of a positive avoidance of change than this.

 

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sebadoh.com

Words: Thomas Howells

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