It has been said that the conceptual birth of Sebadoh happened when Lou Barlow recorded “Poledo” for Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me. Revisiting Sebadoh’s initial recordings in the newly compiled and reissued, The Freed Man, affirms that this statement is only half true. “Poledo” does share a kinship with the band’s early work: simple ukulele chords, stark vocals, tape effects, field recordings. Still the due fame that Barlow received as Dinosaur Jr.’s bassist and co-songwriter, overshadowed the equally apt contributions of his recording mate, Eric Gaffney. With a four-track recorder, an acoustic guitar, a slew of home-made tapes, and the urge to articulate ideas that their memberships in hardcore and punk bands couldn’t, Eric and Lou defined the genre that we’ve come to know as “Lo-Fi”.
The Freed Man – Deluxe Edition is a massive endeavor assembling 52 “recordings” from the original Freed Man tapes, rerecorded material from The Freed Weed LP, unreleased material, and early single tracks. The assertion therefore, that the album can best be appreciated for its overall aesthetic rather than for its dissection into individual songs may seem counterintuitive. Yet every sound on the record belongs: every echo, pop, inebriated diatribe, confessional verse, and guitar strum. Gaffney’s “Julianne” for example is a soaring, partially-realized pop song that ends with a pair of boys scheming for a “Woodstock of hardcore bands”. “K-Sensa My” is sweet and haunting and imbedded behind a collection of indecipherable samples. The songs toggle from atonal and mocking (“Land of the Lords”), to melancholy self-deprecation (“Punch in the Nose”) to full-fledged psychedelia (“Level Anything”). But for all of their variety, each song finds a common context with its loose craft and playful textures.
Written and, in many cases, recorded as separate entities, Barlow and Gaffney’s compositions illuminate the uniqueness of each man’s approach to music. Gaffney, a daring and creative force, crafts experiments that often warp melodies into trance-induced slices of pop. His most successful efforts on The Freed Man hint at a heightened level of consciousness, while other songs fall apart with overambitious arrangement. Barlow’s contributions are consistent if not bare in contrast, with their loyalty to traditional pop music, and concentration on lyric writing. There’s an overwhelming sense of purging in his songs, perhaps due in some part to his concurrent creative rifts with J. Mascis. His triumphant “Hung Up,” recorded in 1989 and placed near the conclusion of the album, reaches a catharsis: “Let this be the last I say/Let the anger fade/No one wants to hear it.” – A spiritual Christening of sorts for Sebadoh.
It would be apt to label this collection both a sketchbook and a document. All of the songs are short and often conclude their fragile melodies as quickly as they’re created. They present as a slate of fertile, sonic ideas that given another year, would flourish. Together Eric and Lou would record the magnificent Sebadoh III. Having the benefit of history we can view The Freed Man as a transitional time for Barlow and Gaffney. They’d both moved from the sheer energy of hardcore and punk into a more articulate mode of creation. So for its successes and failures, The Freed Man is a good album that gives us a window to the fledgling stages of one the 1990s better bands.
