LOU BARLOW
INTERVIEW JONAH FLICKER
LOU’S HOUSE, LOS ANGELES
Lou Barlow’s first proper solo effort, Emoh (Merge) is an intimate record full of stripped-down acoustic songs and programmed, beat-backed tunes. It’s been a busy time for him, with the recent birth of his first child and tour preparations in the works, but I got to sit down with Lou at his Silverlake house recently to discuss the formation of the album, the impending Dinosaur Jr. reunion, future Sebadoh plans, his distaste for the Pixies and his appreciation of ’80s metal.
How long have you been living in L.A.?
Six years.
So do you feel pretty entrenched in whatever L.A. music scene there is, as far as the Silverlake scene and bands like Earlimart and the Ship collective?
The Ship collective, a lot of those guys are from Fresno. They all moved down here at once. So they’re a tight-knit group of people who actually knew each other before they got here. I’ve worked with Aaron [Espinoza], and Earlimart actually opened for me when I did a solo tour about two years ago. But God, I feel isolated here.
Why?
Because I have a house and it’s hard to get out of my house. That’s the thing about L.A., that… I don’t know, I’ve been talking to my friend Imaad [Wasif] a lot about this. We were trying to figure out what it is about L.A. that makes it so difficult for there to be anything approaching a scene.
Why isn’t there a group of bands blossoming from L.A. as there are from the Pacific Northwest or Brooklyn?
I think L.A. really seems to attract, and this is not referring to anyone in particular, but in general, L.A. attracts conformists. People who are trying to be a part of something, as opposed to people who are like… There are people who would be pissed off to hear me say this, but this is my general take from being here for six years.
Do you think the entertainment industry infiltrates everything?
Absolutely. And its uniformity and its bullshit language infiltrate even the underground here. Bands are literally pounding out the same 12 songs in their practice space, working for their showcase. “This next show is gonna be really important for us to do this!”
Is L.A. gonna be your home?
As long as it will have me. It’s been difficult for me simply because I don’t have ambition. I’m not scrapping for shows and I don’t have a manager. And even when I did, I wouldn’t let her do anything. (Laughs) So I have no ambition. And when I’m in a city like L.A., and you have no ambition, you just… I’m just here for the sunshine and the friendly service at the grocery stores and the fairly courteous driving, compared to the East Coast. The little quality-of-life things about living here are great.
This new record is out on Merge. I’m not going to go into the historical stuff too much, but does it strike you at all that the Dinosaur Jr. reissues are coming out on Merge and now this is your new label?
It’s weird, isn’t it? It’s a weird coincidence because I didn’t even know until I actually spoke with Mac [McCaughan] when I was submitting my early mixes to him. I was like, “Hey, Mac, do you think you’d be interested in doing this?” And he was like, “Yeah, definitely, that sounds cool. I like that stuff. Let’s do a record.”
I want to talk about the new record. How long have these songs been in the works?
Some of them have been in the works since I moved here. There’s a song, “Puzzle,” that began to take shape within the first year of me moving here. I had a riff and a lyrical idea. What I did was once I got the riff and lyrical idea, rather than finish it, I just let it float. I didn’t even record it, I just let it float. Why? Because, if you think about it, if I’ve been recording for 17 years now; my early years were spent toiling away at 4-track, recording every idea that I had, as I was having it, basically. And putting out records with 40 songs on them. I figured the one thing I hadn’t tried was writing songs without actually recording demos. Like, not even really writing them down, with the idea that if the song is good, I don’t have to do that. I don’t know how I got that idea. I swear I picked it out of something, like maybe I read an interview with an author or something. Like, if something’s good then you can remember it without writing it down. I had this in mind, that if I was writing a song that I knew with the opening line in the first verse, that if it was good, then the next day, I wouldn’t have to listen to a cassette to remember it, it would be in my head.
Regarding “Mary”: Do you have a religious background?
Yeah, I was raised Roman Catholic.
So is this a reworking or a challenge?
No, it’s something that I’ve thought of from an early age. I went to catechism, which is Sunday school, in the basement of a church. I’ve been subjected to abortion films in the basement of the church. On a nice Sunday afternoon, they take you downstairs and try to brainwash you into these fucking crazy ideas. I thought one of the craziest ideas that first registered to me was the fact that they were trying to separate the idea of sex and Jesus Christ. This amazing prophet, who obviously had this incredible impact on the world with his ideas of peace and understanding, and somehow they want to completely undermine that.
You open with a statement directly to that point.
Right. I just took it from the point of view from a guy, perhaps the brother of Joseph, I don’t know who was actually the one who impregnated Mary. I just had this whole story, I made it up. People have written me who are actually Bible scholars, like, “You know of course…” I’m like, “I don’t care.” This is all conjecture, I don’t care. The idea is that it’s Joseph’s brother and he and Mary had a lot of chemistry. They got together and she got pregnant. But rather than admit that she had sex with Joseph’s brother while she was Joseph’s girlfriend, she was like, “I don’t know, man. Angels came to me. I don’t know what happened.” For whatever reason, she’s this really charismatic girl, and people are like, “Wow, really? Crazy!” She was somehow able to carry this story off, have the kid, and even her boyfriend was like, “Yeah, ok.” Beautiful acceptance. So that’s what I thought of, how beautiful that is. Joseph is like, “Yeah, ok. Cool.”
The Dinosaur Jr. reunion will probably be a pretty big deal for people.
I’ve heard that. I don’t know. I’ve always said Dinosaur was tragically overlooked. I always thought the songs that J. wrote on those first three records were just… I don’t think people realized how he completely changed the landscape of music.
I think in the years since, it’s one of those things that becomes… It’s kind of like the Pixies reunion.
People act like the Pixies were the most fucking revolutionary band on Earth. I’m like, “What? Wait a minute.”
While it existed it was one thing, and in the years since it’s become-
Well, it was huge when it happened. My recollection of the Pixies is they were signed to an English label. Because there was such a huge Anglophilic section of music listeners, especially in L.A., the fact that they were signed to 4AD, that was the key. That added the mystery and the edge that people in L.A. just shit themselves over. People here are driven by labels. But for me, they were a band from Massachusetts; we were a band from Massachusetts. The Pixies were about as heavy as their name. It was like, yuck. They were this band, like, “Fuck them.” The best thing they did was get Steve Albini to butcher their record, cut it to pieces on a tape deck and make it into something that everybody was like, “That’s pretty good, I guess.” I fucking hated the Pixies. I understand their appeal now much more. But at the time, I thought they were like… To me, everything was all Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, the fucking Swans…
The Ratt song that you cover (“Round ‘n’ Round”) almost reminds me of Tenacious D. The drama of it.
(Laughs) Right, right, right.
Why did you choose that song?
I really like the song. In a weird way, that song represents the way that I hear the song. I actually hear that song seriously. “Looking at you, looking at me…” Rather than imitate the way he was singing it, I’m imitating the tone I hear. The thing I loved about heavy metal, bands that could really write songs… Those bands weren’t shit by any means. They could write songs. It’s just that their approach and look, you’re like, “That’s really cheesy, come on, you guys.” But they took themselves seriously. I was trying to do a tribute to the song.
There’s a dramatic feel to it.
I wasn’t trying to make fun of it. I knew that it would be funny to do it, to play it like that, but I didn’t do it to make fun of it. I did it so people would go, “Oh, that’s a good song.” That’s what can be the success of a cover, if you cover it and people go, “I never thought…” People are so caught up in the context of the song, what they were wearing when they recorded it, stupid stuff like that. The core is really beautiful songs that can be reduced to folk songs. The lyrics of that song are pretty obtuse. I don’t really know what they were after with that. But it doesn’t matter.
I saw a band open for Death Cab for Cutie a few years ago, and they did a cover of “Cum on Feel the Noize.” It was really slow-core, subdued, and really beautiful.
I love that song. Quiet Riot was covering a song by Slade, and Slade are an amazing band. That was a cool time. Quiet Riot, Ratt, Cinderella, I didn’t like Poison very much, but they were part of it.
WASP?
Yeah, “Fuck Like a Beast” was a fine song. LA Guns, Faster Pussycat… They all had one good song. And that good song was great. They were obviously kids who grew up on Aerosmith or whatever, and it was before the atonal aspect of speed metal, before all those guys thought they had to be hard. It was back when they were still infatuated with pop music, before Slayer and Metallica made them go, “I’m hard, too!” It was a beautiful time. They were embracing pop music. There were so many talented songwriters, and sometimes they wore Spandex, and that’s the way it was. I have never had any kind of judgment about that. I don’t have guilty pleasures, they’re just pleasures.
Doing a solo album, is it easier than being in a band? Do you prefer it? How does it compare for you? Was it a choice?
It’s almost just, like, what happened. My bands all kind of broke up. Sebadoh didn’t break up, but because we live so far apart, being in a band isn’t really an option. So we just have to be this touring legacy act. We just get together when we want to and trot out the hits and have a great time. And Folk Implosion was just… I tried. I tried to have a new Folk Implosion.
What ended up happening with that?
Two members of the band were trying to divide their time between being in my band and being in their own band, Alaska! And it was just like, “No.” Despite the best intentions, I just got the shaft.
Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Lou Barlow are names that are synonymous with lo-fi sound, but it brings up the question of whether this was an aesthetic choice or a means.
To be totally honest, it is aesthetic because I like the way it sounds. Anytime I ever hear that now, like the first Devendra Banhart record, which was recorded on an answering machine or whatever, the minute I hear that hiss sound, I love it! It’s so great. Every time I hear the voice decaying through tape, I’m completely fascinated by it. I love tinny [sounds]. But I didn’t have any choice. To me, buying a cassette 4-track with money I was making being an orderly or a bagboy, that’s what I had to work with. I could have bought more, but it would have been too difficult to learn. There’s a trade off: Do you want spend a whole shitload of time learning how to work something, or do you just want to fucking plug it in and record? Me, I just wanted to play.