Category Archives: Lo-Fi
Lou Barlow – Goodnight Unkown (Music Review)
Lou Barlow
Goodnight Unknown
Merge
Rating: 3 out of 5
Links: http://www.loobiecore.com/
I’m confused here. When I first put on Goodnight Unknown, I thought I was getting myself into an incredible and noisy indie rock escapade. The opener “Sharing” and the title track both harks back to that early Dinosaur Jr. era indie rock. I mean, c’mon — this is Lou Barlow. When he jangles on these songs, he takes the strings with him putting as much pressure into his music, and this rough and ready approach to pop music is what he’s best known for. This is the Barlow I want.
But then something changes. Barlow turns into this fragile singer/songwriter with a ‘70s folk bent to his music. These songs work best on songs like “Gravitate” where he brings back ghosts from his Sebadoh days and a collection of disjointed lo-fi recording techniques with rough and ready instrumental prose. Even when he is strapped with an acoustic, he tries to maintain a bedroom recording ethic and an edge to the songs. But “Take Advantage” just sounds like a meandering coffee shop acoustic song that sounds like the coffee couldn’t kick in fast enough.
Not to confuse my own attitude towards this release, “I’m Thinking” is a beautiful and slick pop song that turns out to be one of the better pop songs although a standout on this release compared to the other songs that sound like Barlow just started listening to Elliot Smith or John Vanderslice.
Even though “Don’t Apologize” tries to bring back the rough excitement that would make this release amazing, it just is not enough to pull the listener on track and leaves them confused as to which persona Barlow wants to be: the singer/songwriter or the indie rock superhero.
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All Time Quarterback – Self-Titled
All-Time Quarterback
Self-Titled
2002, 1999 – Barsuk
Origin: Bellingham, Washington
Style: Lo-Fi
Lo-Fi recordings are usually hit or miss, think the impressionable Beat Happening or the still charming Tall Dwarves compared to the often unlistenable experience of Sebadoh.
Although not a great release, I give credit to Gibbard for creating a collection of songs that are at least listeneable and flowing through its entirety.
The songs are simple, using a barely plugged-in electric or an acoustic, peppered with an unnecessarily bleeping sampler filled with minimal drums. According to notes on the process, Gibbard used a theme of broken instruments to further accentuate his broken lyrics on society and caught in a small town between Seattle and the Canadian border. Sometime that worked to his advantage. Other times, it did not.
Too fragile for my tastes, the lyrics are well written for someone who was in the beginnings or their career. You can not only hear Gibbard’s faults but also his creative talent. The Lo-Fi aspect give his songs a sense of being earnest unlike his other bands where he sometimes comes off as pretentious.
The best song on this CD is “Why I Cry” in which Gibbard doesn’t even sing on and Gibbard didn’t write; it’s a cover of a Magnetic Fields song.
This collection of Gibbard’s early work is tough to brush off. It’s an album I have no intention of listening to casually, but when it is played, it’s not an album I can quickly turn away from.
Features Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie and Postal Service.
Cross-Reference: Death Cab For Cutie, Postal Service, Magnetic Fields
