After seminal slacker heroes Dinosaur Jr released You’re Living All Over Me in 1987, bassist Lou Barlow decided he’d had enough of the ‘commercial’ indie-rock direction the band was heading in. Dinosaur were hardly Simple Minds, but even their stoned stroppiness was too much of a pose for Barlow. As an outlet, he began recording skeletal songs with local indie DJ Eric Gaffney, and the result was this album. Not that ‘album’ is the appropriate word: it’s more an audio sketchbook of over 30 half-formed ideas and self-indulgent sound dabblings (none passing three minutes), as Barlow rolls around in his creative freedom.
Compared to later lo-fi masterpieces Sebadoh III and Bakesale, it’s a testing listen, especially with the addition of another 21 EP tracks. Later, ‘lo-fi’ became a generic term for anything that sounded a little fuzzy and sarky, but this is hardcore: the lowest of the fi. Ultimately, though, despite Barlow’s anti-commercial convictions (“sometimes magic is so very very boring” he sings on Healthy Sick) the band’s most enduring songs are their poppiest (later hit Flame, for example). It’s an interesting document, but Barlow’s shunning of structure is ultimately self-defeating and tiring. Or, as he says himself on Jaundice, “bored with your embarrassment, bored with your lack of confidence”.
