Bubble & Scrape

The other day I was listening to Sebadoh's Bubble & Scrape for the first time in many years. This was an album that was very close to my heart as a teen. However, it hit me that only now do I really 'get' Eric Gaffney. Moreover, I think that I now prefer much of his output on that album to that of Lou Barlow. Lou Barlow, who along with Thurston Moore and Bob Pollard, was part of my musical holy trinity in high school. While 'Think (Let Tomorrow Bee)' is still hits me as a most heart-wrenching song and 'Homemade' is a great though creepy tribute to the act of masturbation (Key lyric: "Here I am on my knees, praying to the beast that stole the sex from me"), much of Barlow's materiel on Bubble & Scrape now seems to me to be a cheesy attempt to make himself out to be a tortured, broken-hearted martyr. Gaffney on the other hand, comes in recklessly mish-mashing his skewed ideas with each other. His guitar sounds out of tune, his voice warbles, but he plays with something resembling inspiration. Perhaps, it just that I'm not the sentimentalist that I was was a teen, but these days I find much more intrigue from a song titled 'Elixir is Zog' than from 'Soul & Fire'. I suppose that growing older has bittered me a bit on songs about love coming to an end and things of that sort. As a side note, I should mention that Jason Lowenstein's songs on the album are among his best, taking elements both from Gaffney's and Barlow's musical style, thus creating the sense that this is in fact a band and not just three dudes playing solo.