Interview: Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow on ‘Defend Yourself,’ Rush, and being the hipsters of their time

Lou Barlow has always worn his heart on his sleeve. Since Sebadoh’s debut in the mid-80’s, Barlow has crafted hundreds of heartbroken lo-fi songs about ex-girlfriends and ex-bandmates, usually assuming the role of the victim. However, with Defend Yourself, Sebadoh’s first full-length LP in 14 years, Barlow is no longer writing from the point-of-view of a love-spurned victim, but as the driving force behind his recent divorce.

“Someone else has found her way into my soul / Things have changed / No longer need to be with you,” Barlow sings on album opener “I Will,” as blunt of declaration of new-found love as the band has ever put to tape.

While Defend Yourself may deal with with the very personal pains of divorce, Barlow and Sebadoh haven’t entirely lost their sense of humour. Their latest release is a ridiculous Canada-themed picture disc 7″ featuring a bastardized cover of Rush’s “Limelight,” complete with a drawing of Canada’s flag merged with a pot leaf, and a photo of Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys proudly displayed on the flip side.

We caught up with Lou Barlow by phone from his home in Massachusetts to discuss the painful process behind Defend Yourself, why he owes Sub Pop so much money, his return to Dinosaur Jr., and a lot more.

Sebadoh are currently on tour across North America. For all tour dates, visit sebadoh.com.

How did this “Limelight” ode to Canada 7” come out?

Well, The Onion brings bands into the studio in their home office in Chicago and they make you do covers. They videotape it and record it, and they make you choose from a list of songs to do, and we were one of the last bands to do it, in the cycle of this particular thing, and “Limelight” was on the list. Jason [Loewenstein] and Bob [Fay] were really excited because they love Rush. And so we did “Limelight,” even though I couldn’t possibly play it [laughs]. They played it pretty much from memory, because they listened to Rush incessantly when they were kids—I didn’t, so I just sang it. We did it for the Onion and it was then posted on their web site and received some of the most brutal—just a steady stream of brutally negative reviews from music fans and Rush fans alike. And then somehow the idea came up that we would turn the song into a single, and then in the process of doing that—I think as a band we do really enjoy coming to Canada, and we’ve been longtime fans of Canada I guess, if you can be fans of a country. So then it kind of just mutated into this tribute to Canada, then the Trailer Park Boys were involved a little bit too.

How did the relationship with Joyful Noise come about?

Well, the first contact I had with Karl Hofstetter, he kind of runs the label, or at least he’s kind of the curator of the label, he contacted me because Joyful Noise did a cassette box set of the first three Dinosaur Jr. records. And he contacted me that way, and kind of made himself known as a Sebadoh fan. He’s young and enthusiastic, so pretty much just kept e-mailing me regularly, and asking if we were doing new material, and then we did start to do new material and he said he was interested—it just seemed logical.

Was there ever a thought of putting it out yourselves?

Well, we did think about it. We’d actually done an EP from the album sessions, and we did have some CD’s made up for tour, and we put it up on Bandcamp. You just realize that putting out your own record is a pain in the ass, I guess. Like, big news—I’ve always known that. So it’s like, “It’s modern age! We can put it up online!” Then it’s like, “Well, who the hell’s going to send it out? [Laughs] Like, not me! I’ve got kids, I’ve got things to do.” God, we didn’t want to do that. And we certainly weren’t going to hire somebody to do that. But we did flirt with the idea of a self-release. But making it readily available and distributing it—that’s best left for people who want to do that.

Has technology made the kind of recordings you like to make easier? Or is it still the same process it was when you were staring out?

Well, the last time we make a record—I can’t remember how many years ago it was—the last four records we made, we recorded in a studio, and we released them on Sub Pop Records, and we did press tours [laughs] and things like that, and there was considerably more pressure on the band I’d say. Just being a young, new band. You know, being the hipsters of our time back then. We were like any hipster band—people were writing articles about us, and wondering if we were actually going to be any good, and all this other stuff [laughs]. People were interested. Those days are kind of gone, you know? I guess it really takes the pressure off considerably. Making the new record was pretty pressure-free. In the end, we didn’t answer to anybody. There wasn’t any talk of what “the single” was going to be. Just no bullshit I guess [laughs]. Sebadoh functions better when we don’t have a lot of that stuff around us. We function better as just a collection of three guys who make some music together and go on tour.

Lyrically, the album is a really direct break-up record—what did it feel like to get these songs out there?

Um, well, I guess it was a little … tough, this time around. Because, I think it kind of opened us up to a lot of criticism in a way. Like, back in the day, they were like these break-up songs that were heartbreak songs. I had more of a victim thing going on I guess. So people were like, “Oh, poor heartbroken…” And this time around, we’re writing about really ugly adult shit, so it’s not as charming. And we made the record in the midst of a lot of changes, so the record is pretty dark, I guess. And a lot of the reviews and things were pretty harsh because of that. And also, I was kind of going through it, so I was doing interviews basically just on the cusp of this enormous change in my life, with a lot of people involved. You know, children and spurned exes, it was kind of a mess. So I couldn’t really talk… You know, back in the day, when I would just be like, “Oh, you know, my girlfriend broke up with me and went to another guy, but I wrote a bunch of songs about it and she came back to me.” [Laughs] And this one was just like, “No, this is a bloody mess and that’s it.” And people were far less… enchanted by that, let’s say. And doing interviews and things in the midst of that would suck too, because I couldn’t really speak frankly, and at the same time I was still talking, probably when I should have been keeping my mouth shut. So it was hard.

It’s a very private thing to go through, I can’t imagine having to talk to strangers about it all day.

Well, it was weird. But I did it because that’s what I’d always done; I’ve always worn everything on my sleeve. But in this instance, I think the songs were hard enough. I write them obviously to express something that’s going on in my life, but I do that because that’s what I think songs are, you know? I think songs in general should be expressions of what people have gone through. Also, as a songwriter, I almost feel like that’s my responsibility to do that. To put myself out there a little bit, and to put difficult situations into songs, because that’s what I like about music. I know a lot of other people who feel the same way. But not everybody really cares about that stuff. A lot of people don’t care what the words are to songs [laughs]. They don’t care whether the songwriter went through it or not, there’s a lot of that. So I’ve always been kind of up against that.

What was the initial reaction when Sebadoh started? Were people expecting a heavier sound from you at that time?

When we made out first recordings, I felt like in a lot of ways music was really masculine. Like it was just really masculine and aggressive. And I’m not just talking about hardcore, but there was the beginnings of grunge, the beginning of Mudhoney … even bands like Superchunk—there was just a lot of male bluster, I thought. So when we made our first records, I did kind of consciously want to make stuff that was really close to the bone, and quiet. But also, at the same time, not typically folk, and not typical song structures. Like, actually borrow a lot from something like hardcore, which is a really stripped-down version of punk rock. Very stripped-down and accelerated. I wanted to do kind of a similar thing for folk music—strip it right down to the bone, make the songs really short, and say things in the songs that maybe made people uncomfortable. With almost that same attitude that hardcore and punk have, where you just want to needle people. It seems foolish to me now and kind of pretentious, but at the time, you actually have this idea that “I’m going to change the way people think about things, and I’m gonna challenge people.” And Sebadoh had that idea, that we were challenging people. We were going to start by stripping everything down, and making it quiet first. And of course, we became more of a normal band as things went on, just because it was more practical to play shows that way.

Initially, people were like, “What is this shit? How dare you release your demos?” It was kind of controversial, but we were young guys, and there were other young girls and guys our age who had similar sensibilities, so it made sense then.

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