Sebadoh @ Lee's Palace

This will be a relatively brief post because I’m insanely tired today, but last night the original lineup of Sebadoh performed live at Lee’s Palace to a full house of people who have been waiting 14 years for this to happen.

I think I missed the first opening act, but the second one was a local act known as Flecton Bigsky. This was a two-piece that played very bluesy, stripped down rock that I thought was actually quite good. The lead singer, Miche Jetté seemed like a genuinely down to earth kind of guy. Y’know, the beer guzzlin’, rock ‘n roll type who still hasn’t really decided how much to sell his CD’s for. The songs were fun, strange and deep; and the audience was poised and ready to hear the lo-fi, indie noise-rock of Lou Barlow, Eric Gaffney and Jason Lowenstein.

Downloads:
Death By Vibration mp3
Summer Down In Flames mp3
Truce Is Stranger Than Fiction mp3

Visit the Flecton Bigsky myspace page
Purchase Flecton’s “Never Took A Wife” CD over at Kelp Records
View my pics of the Flecton Bigsky show on my flickr page.

The last (and only) time I saw Sebadoh, it was just Jason, Lou and some mechanical sampling machine acting as drummer. Needless to say, it was a good show but obviously lacking in a few ways. This show, on the other hand, was a real tribute to 90’s indie-rock, with all three members having a share as frontman. I’ve always been partial to the Lou Barlow material, while mostly dismissing a lot of the other songs. But this show has caused me to reassess the way I feel about the others. Gaffney gave it all he’s got, acting genuinely thrilled to be back in the fold again. And Lowenstein, looking about 35 pounds lighter than I remember, simply oozes with grunge-styled conceit, but in a cool way. For one portion of the show, Eric and Jason left the stage while Barlow was talking about the Dinosaur Jr. reunion. After quipping about how the other guys don’t like to hear about Dino Jr., Lou performed a chill-inducing rendition of “On Fire” from the “Harmacy” album, alone and acoustic. At another point of the show, Lou introduced a member of the audience to the stage, who then proceeded to propose to his girlfriend in front of all in the audience. Incredibly cheesy, but the crowd ate it up. The show ended with two encores, culminating in a really really bad version of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin” that I have to believe was intentionally bad, and then a truly psychotic rendition of the classic “Gimme Indie Rock!” The crowd was stoked, the fans were satisfied, and Sebadoh is now free to go back to not getting along and carrying on with their respective solo careers or whatever it is they’re doing now.

Downloads:
The Freed Pig mp3
Gimme Indie Rock mp3

Visit the Sebadoh myspace page
Purchase Sebadoh CD’s on Amazon.ca
View my pics of the Sebadoh show on the flickr page.