Somehow the album manages to encompass the emotional and affecting balladry of Lou Barlow, the often bonkers brilliance of Gaffney and the Jake Lowenstein tracks which veer between the two extremes.
Sebadoh – Bubble & Scrape (reissue)
http://sebadoh.com/ http://www.dominorecordco.com/ http://www.munichrecords.com/
Bubble & Scrape caught Sebadoh in a moment of transition. At its heart lies a contradiction. Simultaneously the three band members were pulling together and pulling apart. Ever an erratic and fractured unit, the chaotic shifts between each members songs somehow knit together to form a whole that just about hangs together as a whole.
The contradiction is that whilst producing the most fully realised album to date, the band itself was splintering. Tensions between Eric Gaffney and band-mates would see him leave soon after. The differences are evident on record. Somehow the album manages to encompass the emotional and affecting balladry of Lou Barlow, the often bonkers brilliance of Gaffney and the Jake Lowenstein tracks which veer between the two extremes.
So we have Barlow compositions such as Soul and Fire and Two Years Two Days, emotional and uncomfortable, sitting alongside the nuttiness of Gaffney’s Elixir is Zog, frenetic and bonkers. Then there are Lowenstien’s tracks, which sit somewhere between the two. This is perhaps demonstrated best by the transition between the acoustic strum of Happily Divided to the riff-heavy Sister that immediately follows it. Somehow these varied approaches work together to form a (just about) cohesive whole.
The greater sense of cohesiveness on the album is somewhat undermined by the bonus material, mostly culled from b-sides it is largely for the completist. An exception would be the very last track, an intimate acoustic demo of Soul and Fire. Barlow’s changed lyrics ‘Call me if you ever want to start again/ call me if you ever want to love again provide a coda not just for the re-release of the album but for the version of Sebadoh that recorded it. It does seem that that call may have been made, however as the three members recently came together to perform Bubble & Scrape in its entirety.
Words: Stuart Crosse