Last autumn I saw Lou Barlow at a club. It was the first time, oddly, considering the length of our common experience (and by “common experience” I mean, Lou making all that music and me listening to it). It was Obama’s election night. The prevailing moment—at least we thought—of change, and all that. Barlow, whose reputation was known to most of the crowd, was opening up for Detroit’s Electric Six, an odd pairing of punk and post-punk, polar opposite ends of the same swimming pool. Barlow loomed over his microphone against the brick backdrop, head almost hitting the rafters as he crooned and bounced. Toward the end of the show, he stripped off his thrift store sweater to reveal a Lou Barlow T-shirt.
As awkward as it was to watch Barlow parade about as himself, he was moody and eclectic, challenging his listeners with wry skills as usual. He was almost a tonic to the whiskey-soaked juvenilia that was to follow. He still had something to say, an axe to grind, perhaps, and his new album Goodnight Unkown is packed with further proof of that. It’s the customary array of somber indie folk (“Too Much Freedom” and “Faith In Your Heartbeat”) and grizzly, fuzzy Dinosaur rock (“Sharing”). The 14-song, 37-minute album has all the hallmarks of his prodigally diverse career. After all of this time, Barlow still creates catchy songs, like “The Right,” a fetching, toe-tapping song that should restore faith in his songwriting (if you’re one of the few who’s actually lost it). He’s a 43-year-old man in charge of his powers, evidenced on “I’m Thinking…,” a thoughtfully spare statement on age, strength, and how those work with and contrast to one another. He croons, “The older I get, I get older.”
You and me both, Lou. Seriously.
It remains to be seen if that 44th president inaugurated that night is indeed the harbinger of change he was advertised to be. Promises. When they’re said out loud, suddenly people remember and hold you to them. By contrast, Barlow never promised his leaders anything, yet decades later he’s keeping his word, one of the few bedrocks of independent rock. Converse All-Stars, thrift-store sweaters, and a thirst for irony: some things don’t need upheaval; the Goodnight Unknown stands as proof. |