BUBBLE AND SCRAPE

The essential, 1993 masterpiece of the lo-fi sub-genre of 90’s indie rock. Slightly more dangerous and eccentric than Sebadoh’s more critically acclaimed follow-up, Bakesake (1994), this album luckily still features founding member Eric Gaffney on the mic and in the songwriting chair. In the tradition of previous great Sebadoh releases, a democratic and Beatlesesque approach to arranging the songs, within the format of the studio LP, is at its most demonstrative and at its full glory. “Way to go, Sebadoh!”.

This album kind of presents the band as three pretty different kinds of songwriters, which can make it feel frustratingly choppy and schizophrenic, but also makes it entertainingly unpredictable. Lou Barlow presents himself as the sensitive, heart-on-sleeve one, with melancholy melodies and emotionally direct lyrics like "guilt is a stupid thing, don't let it make you stay/ leave me if you're wanting someone else, I'll be okay". Though his lyrics occasionally approach lovelorn cliche, his sincere delivery mostly manages to make them believable and affecting, and he also provides most of the album's more immediate melodies. Jason Loewenstein is overall fairly compatible with Barlow; though his lyrics can be little more abstract and his material can get a little bit noisier, his songs are pretty sympathetic in tone to the Barlow ones. But then completely out of left field we have the oddball noise-punk of Eric Gaffney. While his contributions are pretty acquired taste, and usually don't end up making much musical sense, he always brings some interesting ideas to the table, and unlike the Barlow and Loewenstein numbers, I honestly haven't heard anything quite like them. There's a few clear traces of Minutemen and Sonic Youth influences, but he makes it fully his own with queasy chord changes, psychotic screaming, and unpredictable shifts in structure and even genre ("Fantastic Disaster" keeps jumping into bizarre out of tune harmonica/piano breaks, "Emma Get Wild" starts out as a surf/jazz instrumental before suddenly turning into a slightly unhinged Daydream Nation rocker, "No Way Out" fades out after about a minute, then devotes half of it's run time to a bizarre collage of unintelligible sped up voices and clips apparently taped off the radio). There seems to be an attempt to make it flow a little better by pairing off songs by whoever happens to be singing lead at the time, but in a way this emphasizes the differences in approach even more. Honestly it feels a little like listening to the a and b-sides of singles by three different bands that are only similar in that they all feature lo-fi production and ragged playing. Still, overall this is a pretty good listen for anyone exploring mid-90's underground rock.

Bubble and Scrape is a great Sebadoh album and the extra tracks here add to its value. The style of the bonus tracks is a bit different, like Sebadoh 3 but completely electric. Many are essential for anyone who likes Sebadoh, with a fascinating set of instrumental collages in Parts 1-4 (the Jason Loewenstein contribution part 4 is especially good), and another great Sebadoh cover in Reject. We should be grateful to have these extra tracks available and I don't see that they detract from the album.

HOLY SOMETHING!I haven't stopped playing this CD. In the line of more 'popular' artists like the Pixies, The Velvet Underground and someother artist, Bubble and Scrape manages to build a disturbing masterpiece of harmonious melodies and downright strange trippy moments, in words that come to mind. Thank you Sebadoh, for being the best band I almost never heard of.

Sebadoh did alot of different things with their sound. First it was the ultra low fi stuff then the insane verbal assaults from Eric then this.... Which is like an in-between of a clean cut indie sound mixed with a raw anger-filled punk band. Most songs have normal beginnings but then move into Sonic youth territory with lots of incoherent screaming and guitar. Take the opener Soul and Fire. It's a tight normal sounding song, then as we move on with the album we find ourselves covering our ears over Eric's literally insane over-the-top screams like in Elixir is Zog, Flood and Telecosmic Alchemy. Flood is about drug use or doing drugs from what I heard in Eric's offbeat screaming. Elixir is Zog makes little sense but I think it's about date rape for some reason. Telecosmic Alchemy is just another weird punky song. Eric said it's about a comic book ad. Uhhh.But then there's the songs that board the line of weird and actual music like Bouquet for a Siren, which is one hell of a song, but the off line singing and rampant guitar make it pretty weird within first listen it is a highlight of the album though. Fantastic disaster is another one, starts like a normal song then drives into harmonicas and screaming and alot of weird pedal use. Still it seems to flow and work so damn well. Another weird-ish song is Emma get Wild which reminds me highly of the Minutemen with a different vocalist.But Barlow can strike back with some REALLY good songs like Cliche, Two years, two days, Forced Love, Hassle, Sacred Attetnion and Happliy Divided. Cliche is actually one of the BEST Sebadoh songs i've personally heard. Soul and Fire seems to be the winner of the best sounding/written song on the album, but I seem to love Cliche a whole lot more. Sacred Attention boarders grunge as does Two years Two Days.Recommended if you know Sebadoh from the early onward. If you're new then start with The Sebadoh (1999) or Harmacy.

I'm giving this 4 stars because I'm a fan of the album itself. However, I didn't notice a huge change sonically over the initial CD release, and the bonus tracks are, for the most part, bad. I thought the Sebadoh III reissue was fantastic, and the bonus tracks were overall quite good. Unless you're a rabid Sebadoh completist, if you already own "Bubble & Scrape", you probably don't need this.