Sentridoh
Songs from Loobiecore
self-released

Before today's assorted online diarists, ultra-personal bloggers and camgirls began their cacophonous virtual chorus of "I am, I exist, and I will stare at my navel," Lou Barlow was taking his own soul-baring to the streets, low-tech. While suffering his time as one-third of dysfunctional rock monster Dinosaur Jr, he also used boombox or a four-track cassette deck to record songs dually inspired by the autobiographical candor of confessional singer-songwriters and the simple, direct power of punk rock.

About 15 years after Barlow's homemade Sebadoh tapes started hitting record store racks in college-town Massachusetts, his lo-fi has gone high-tech. Home-recorded material new, previously unreleased and out-of-print is available for free download on Barlow's website. Reviving one of a multitude of project names, Barlow has gathered highlights — still available for free on the site — for the self-released Sentridoh album Songs From Loobiecore.

In a comforting way, little else has changed. Voice and acoustic guitar are the main tools. If the words are a bit oblique in comparison to the plainspoken but incisive lyrics that have been Barlow's hallmark, the same feelings of hazy, beautiful sadness still come through clearly on songs like "Over The Fall" and "On The Face." Even the self-deprecating album insert caveat, "poorly recorded and played by Louis Knox Barlow," echoes the liner notes from Dinosaur's Yr Living All Over Me, which dismissively tagged Barlow collage/composition "Poledo" as "recorded on 2 crappy tape recorders by Lou & Lou alone in his room."

Humor — or at least truth spoken in jest — hits hard in a couple of places. "WWJD" seems like pure novelty, filtering a lovers' fight and break-up through the question, "What would Jesus do?" At its climax, the real punchline, "Would he just get drunk/ and sell off all your junk/ like I did?" drops with all the sad-funny wistfulness of a dead-on country tune. "Don't Call Me Writer" bemoans Barlow's fairly recent case of writer's block with jokey lines like "I let methamphetamine burn a hole in my brain/ the part of my brain that wrote the songs," but scratches the surface of Barlow's real dread of departed creativity.

A pair of sore thumbs at around mid-disc, "None Of Your Goddam Bizness" and "I Love My Momma," respectively pay tribute to Pa and Ma Barlow. Although there's an essential heartfelt sweetness to the efforts themselves, they come across as goofy and cloying in turn, not exactly inspiring repeat listenings. Even rougher going are the older tracks tacked onto the end of the disc that wallow in crashing experimentation, willful obscurism and nonsense chants. While mildly interesting in concept, this kind of stuff is only tolerable in small doses and likely to have you hitting "stop" early.

Songs From Loobiecore might not have the impact of an underground classic such as 1990's Weed Forestin,' which in retrospect feels like a near-perfect template for the home recording revolution, both in content and execution. The new disc sits happily alongside subsequent Barlow releases like Winning Losers as fine further work in a style very much his own. As of 2002, Sebadoh the band is on hiatus while its other main component, Jason Loewenstein, pursues a solo career. Prominent side project the Folk Implosion is a done deal now that their contractual obligation to Interscope Records has been canceled. It seems Loobiecore's mix of short, fairly accessible songs with raw recording values might represent the near future for Barlow, and that's a welcome prospect in a world gone slick.

— Wayne Lewis (capsighs@pacbell.net)