Sebadoh III, Second Installment -- the CD reissue

SEBADOH
Sebadoh III (Domino)

Sebadoh III is not the strongest album in the Sebadoh catalog. That honor should probably go to either Bakesale or Harmacy. But like the early stages of a relationship, where the awkward moments coexist with the new, uncharted moments of bliss, the album's highpoints keep things at an exciting level. And also like a couple who are just getting to know each, the band's members - Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney and Jason Loewenstein - were evolving from a bedroom project into a real band as the album took shape. This resulted in something a patchwork quality to the 23 songs. (The length made it the first Homestead Records album that was not released on both vinyl and CD). Within a few years, Guided By Voices would be making this sonic gear shift de riguer.

Instrumentation went from solo Barlow recordings to full tilt power trio, with all three getting a chance at the mike. And even when it song didn't make the grade -- or in the case of Gaffney's material, when it got under your skin -- there was always the reassurance that things would pick up within a track or two.

After two albums of lo-fi home recordings by Gaffney and Barlow, Sebadoh III's opening notes come as a pleasant surprise. "The Freed Pig" comes out of the gate with an especially catchy one-string guitar lead that immediately hooks the ear, before Barlow calmly unleashes an open letter to his former Dinosaur, Jr. bandmate J. Mascis. Messy as the lyrical message is (so much so that Gaffney refused to play on it once he heard the words), it sounds like a pop hit.

Many of the album's best moments come in three-song stretches. The best is Barlow's confessional trilogy: "Truly Great Thing," "Kath" (a love song to his future wife, recorded at home as she slept on the other side of the bed) and "Perverted World." Long before emo made heart-on-the-sleeve songs common, here was a guy who sounded shy as he expressed his deep emotions in a way that sounded genuine, playing them over fragile semi-acoustic riffs. "Kath" in particular has a compelling Beatles-cum-flamenco minor riff to it. Then, as if to prove he's not so timid, Barlow grabs Gaffney and the dangerous duo performs a murderous version of Johnny Mathis' "Wonderful Wonderful" where only the lyrics remain from the original.

Loewenstein's trilogy comes in the middle of the disc and presents his sole contributions to the disc. The faux jazz of "Smoke a Bowl" offers a respite from Gaffney's drug-laced scream fests and proves some yuks. "Black Haired Girl" and "Hoppin' Up and Down" are nowhere near as strong as his later material, but they work as sketches in progress.

By the time Eric Gaffney left Sebadoh a few albums later, he had digressed into the one-dimensional screamfests that would become the norm for indie bands that couldn't do Sebadoh's laundry. But on this album, he managed to temper the lung workouts with dreamy riffs and some whacked out Syd Barrett-like imagery ("Fritos roost on dancing wire/ puzzling out a selfish high/ commandment of meadow mouth/ kiss the ground, lift up the house" - "Scars, Four Eyes").

Gaffney's epic "As the World Dies the Eyes of God Grow Bigger" stands as something of an endurance test with its quiet-to-loud shifts, along with similar vocal work and a hard-to-follow narrative that's part narrative and part stream-of-consciousness (due to the bottle of whiskey Gaffney downed during the sessions.) The song, and the album, end with the singer repeatedly screaming "Blood on the walls," which gets lost in a wall of echo as it fades out, making him sound like he's put the blood there himself and he's off to continue the carnage.

The first time I played this album, I nodded off sometime during that song, waking at the climax only to be freaked out, fearing the end had come. In a certain sense it had, since indie rock was turning a corner. Nirvana released Nevermind within a week or two of Sebadoh III's hitting the streets, and we all know what happened there. But Sebadoh was now a living breathing band and at that moment, that was all that mattered.

The reissue's bonus disc contains a few demos of songs that eventually wound up on the album, without offering too different a picture. The real treasure is the "Gimme Indie Rock" EP, which kicks off disc two. That song still packs a sarcastic whallop 15 years down the line.

"Showtape '91" the 12-minute track that closes the disc, is probably for diehard fans only. When the band set-up or switched instruments during the 1991 fall tour, Barlow would flip on a tape of bogus band introductions: "Your post-modern folk-core saviors, Sebadoh!"; "Your new favorite dope smoking renaissance threesome, Sebadoh!" All of them appear here. Self-indulgent, yes. But like the song that launches the second disc, it isn't afraid to lampoon the categorization that indie fans took so seriously at that time, and still do today. So I'm glad it's there.