Sebadoh Mull New Album While Dinosaur Jr. Take the Anti-Pixies Reunion Route

Posted on Jun 16th 2011 4:00PM by Joe Tacopino
Comments

Roger Kisby, Getty Images

When discussing the origins of the modern lo-fi movement, Lou Barlow's name is sure to come up. By fronting the influential indie group Sebadoh and playing bass for Dinsosaur Jr. with J Mascis, he has cultivated this now-trendy genre through hours of four-track recordings since the early '80s. Nowadays, he admits he enjoys all the recent attention directed at the aesthetic he basically helped invent.

"I like low-fidelity recordings, ideally," Barlow tells Spinner. "It's great that people are embracing that kind of sound as something legitimate. To me, it's just good taste.

"When I hear a band like, I don't know, the Black Lips and they do these really crunchy records I'm like, 'f--- yeah. Go for it.' It's great."

Barlow recently reissued Sebadoh's 1994 indie classic 'Bakesale' as a double album with B-sides, demos and home recordings.

"It's really a rag tag," Barlow says about the bonus disc. "When it came down to doing the package I asked [bassist Jason Loewenstein] if he could find some demos of his from that period. I thought it'd be good just to tap Jason's demos."

The album cover still sports the now-iconic image of a baby reaching into a toilet bowl. And, in case you were wondering, yes, that is Barlow in the photo.

"Yeah, that's true, me as a baby, 1-year-old in Ohio," he says. "Just one of our treasured family photographs."

Coincidentally, the rerelease of 'Bakesale' comes out when the time as Barlow has a son around the same age he was in the curious cover art.

"I have a 1-year-old son now. I would imagine maybe I had thrown matchbox car in toilet or something," he says. "I'm sure that if I was anything like my son -- and I bet I was -- that I was putting things inside the toilet and pulling them back out."

After mending fences with J Mascis, Barlow has been pretty busy lately playing bass with the reformed Dinosaur Jr. But as for the future of Sebadoh, the band is still touring and a new album may soon be in the works.

"We did two tours this spring and it was awesome," Barlow says. "We had a really good time on the tour and now it's like, 'f---, we could probably do a record."

Barlow is taking a page out of the Dinosaur Jr. playbook. When that band reemerged in 2005, they started working on new material instead of churning out the same old hits on tour.

"I liked what Dinosaur did," Barlow says. "I thought that J really took the high road with the reunion, instead of just doing the Pixies thing and pounding out the old songs for 10 years, you know. After two years of doing that we just started doing new material, and J was into it."

Dinosaur Jr. have released two albums since Barlow rejoined the band. The long stormy relationship between Barlow and Mascis may now have a happy bookend, as the two sparring partners are happily working both together and solo.

"I'm gonna write some songs for Dinosaur this year, 'cause we probably got another record coming out," Barlow reveals. "My experience with that band was really great, it was kind of an inspiration. And with Sebadoh, obviously it's my band. It feels even better."

Watch Sebadoh's 'Skull' Video

Follow @Spinner on Twitter | Like Spinner on Facebook

Download Sebadoh Songs | Buy Sebadoh Albums