Photo: Joyful Noise
Since starting a music career in the early ‘80s, in the punk band Deep Wound, Lou Barlow has proved a hugely influential, and enduring, figure in alt-rock. He formed Dinosaur Jr with bandmate J Mascis, then two heavily collaborative outfits, Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion, which inspire DIY acts to this day.
Folk Implosion, a duo with John Davis, started in a similar vein to Sebadoh - lo-fi, and angsty - but by the time they supplied the soundtrack to the Larry Clark film Kids, (which scored them an honest-to-god hit with the song ‘Natural One’), they’d embraced sample collage and hip-hop influences alongside more singer-songwriter-centric modes.
After a long hiatus, following an album in 2003 that didn’t feature Davis, the project is back, with an album called Walk Thru Me.
Lou Barlow has always possessed a disarmingly guileless voice, even when he was bashing out lo-fi garage rock. He’s in his late 50s now, but sounds much the same as he did 30 years ago on tracks like ‘My Little Lamb’, an appropriately sweet song about parenthood.
The Folk Implosion contrasts Barlow’s more straightforward songwriting with John Davis’, who I suspect is the member behind those notes you don’t expect. On this album he played Middle Eastern instruments like setar, oud, saz, and tombak, a result of Persian music studies. He also sings, his honking, nasal voice very different to Barlow’s, but entirely complimentary.
The Folk Implosion worked on the Kids soundtrack with Wally Gagel, who, over the course of an eclectic career, has mixed for The Rolling Stones, written for Backstreet Boys, and remixed New Order. He also helmed their second and third albums, Dare to Be Surprised, and One Part Lullaby, which showed a much greater interest in digital production techniques, and turned the band into a studio project, utilising drum machines and sampling Serge Gainsbourg.
For Walk Thru Me, Barlow and Davis collaborated remotely, and employed Scott Solter, a seemingly more indie-minded producer. Results are focused much more on live instrumentation, and energy.
There’s some rhythmic flare to tracks like ‘The Day You Died’, which addresses the passing of John Davis' father, but Walk Thru Me often seems like it's trying to recapture the raw approach of The Folk Implosion’s scrappy beginnings. Lou Barlow’s distorted bass sounds exactly as it did back then.
There’s a charge to those sections, but I mostly enjoy the interplay between Barlow’s sincere balladry, and Davis’ seeming attempts to subvert it. Things never get too sweet, but the quieter songs, like the closing ‘Moonlit Kind’, are the moments when the pair’s creative instincts perfectly compliment one another.
