Bubble And Scrape

by

Sebadoh

Edit

This album kind of presents the band as three pretty different kinds of songwriters, which can make it feel frustratingly choppy and schizophrenic, but also makes it entertainingly unpredictable. Lou Barlow presents himself as the sensitive, heart-on-sleeve one, with melancholy melodies and emotionally direct lyrics like "guilt is a stupid thing, don't let it make you stay/ leave me if you're wanting someone else, I'll be okay". Though his lyrics occasionally approach lovelorn cliche, his sincere delivery mostly manages to make them believable and affecting, and he also provides most of the album's more immediate melodies. Jason Loewenstein is overall fairly compatible with Barlow; though his lyrics can be little more abstract and his material can get a little bit noisier, his songs are pretty sympathetic in tone to the Barlow ones. But then completely out of left field we have the oddball noise-punk of Eric Gaffney. While his contributions are pretty acquired taste, and usually don't end up making much musical sense, he always brings some interesting ideas to the table, and unlike the Barlow and Loewenstein numbers, I honestly haven't heard anything quite like them. There's a few clear traces of Minutemen and Sonic Youth influences, but he makes it fully his own with queasy chord changes, psychotic screaming, and unpredictable shifts in structure and even genre ("Fantastic Disaster" keeps jumping into bizarre out of tune harmonica/piano breaks, "Emma Get Wild" starts out as a surf/jazz instrumental before suddenly turning into a slightly unhinged Daydream Nation rocker, "No Way Out" fades out after about a minute, then devotes half of it's run time to a bizarre collage of unintelligible sped up voices and clips apparently taped off the radio). There seems to be an attempt to make it flow a little better by pairing off songs by whoever happens to be singing lead at the time, but in a way this emphasizes the differences in approach even more. Honestly it feels a little like listening to the a and b-sides of singles by three different bands that are only similar in that they all feature lo-fi production and ragged playing. Still, overall this is a pretty good listen for anyone exploring mid-90's underground rock.

This is the weirdest sebadoh album. Especially all of eric's song. Jason has a few weird ones too. And as usual lou, mellows things out. but

this album split apart three songwriters into one musical mirage of sounds. the album starts off with two from barlow, two from gaffney, and then two from loewenstein. and then goes back to barlow and the rest in that order again. except for the end then it's a little different.its kinda like three seperate albums. its all over the place and pretty crazy. im still getting used to it. harmacy is by far my favorite. but bubble and scrap is there when i need a break from the other ones.