Lou Barlow Goodnight Unknown (Domino)
3/5
By: Matt Tomiak
‘It isn’t a state so much as a connective tissue, joining the east, north, south and Midwest...’
That was Stephen Fry’s summary of Ohio as expressed during last year’s BBC series ‘Stephen Fry in America’, in which the twitter-loving polymath visited each state in the US. It seems fitting that Lou Barlow, born in Dayton, OH, forty three years ago, should call it home. After all, the work of the former Dinosaur Jr bassist and Sebadoh and Folk Implosion lynchpin has formed the link between so many of the clans and movements that have emerged during the past couple of generations in alternative rock, inspiring everything from grunge’s first wave to 21st century folk; the influence of his defiantly DIY recording tactics, starkly exposed lyrical approach and coexisting love of excoriating noise and sweet melody apparent on everyone from Blur to Band of Horses to Beck.
Like our own much-treasured Graham Coxon, Barlow has greeted the arrival of his forties by trading in the brusque experimentation that characterized his early career with a lot of pretty, pastoral Nick Drake-style cogitation (‘Too Much Freedom’, ‘The One I Call’.)
But on this, his second solo LP, he, can’t be accused of completely compromising his old values – opener ‘Sharing’, a defiantly primordial slab of lo-fi garage punk sounds like it was recorded on an inexpensive Dictaphone - and the wonky alt-country of the title track makes little concession to middle aged respectability.
Artists in this article: Lou Barlow
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