Lou Barlow

I’ve been listening to Lou Barlow’s most recent album for a full day now and I must say it’s pretty stupendous. I usually shy away from the indie/folk/country divide and so I was pleasently surprised to find a well rounded and captivating album. “Goodnight Unknown” was released in early October on the hypocritically indie label Merge Records. I wish I could tell you a cool indie story worthy of the quality that Lou Barlow provides, but sadly, I found out about him via KCRW’s Today’s Top Tune podcast. I’m a sell out, I know, but as I slowly make the transition from indie high school kid to yuppie/prep college student I find that it’s ok to listen to KCRW and NPR and not be considered “mainstream.” Good radio is the stereogum of the working crowd and I am fast finding it appealing. Oh well.

The Right

Pinback jumps to mind immediately upon hearing this song but perhaps that’s only because I’ve been trying to find a copy of “This is a Pinback CD” to no avail. It has a very distinct rhythym that makes me want to ride the train or go on a road trip. There isn’t a lot of diversity within the song but it’s strong and makes me feel good so check it.

Gravitate

It starts off a little slow and you will be forced to listen to some lyrics (ugh..) but that is over after a minute and a pretty sweet guitar riff starts up and the drums kick in for quite the symphonic sound. I’m still a little on the fence as to how much I like this song and it definitely stand apart from the rest of the album but for sure give it a chance.

I feel like you get the feeling for his sound if you actually listened to the two songs above (which you should) so I won’t really bother giving my thoughts on these two other than they’re good. They also have weird creepy videos to go along with them, but don’t let that detract from the music.

One Machine, One Long Night

Too Much Freedom

There’s also this kind of cool video documentary about the making of the album. It keeps the bizarre theme going but it is sort of interesting once you get three minutes in but nothing earth shattering by any means. It’s also long and for some reason he recorded his voice-over with a stereo microphone which really get’s annoying.