Queer As Folk

He doesn t sound like a legend. In fact he sounds as normal as Joe Normal, the most normal man in the world, but Lou Barlow is anything but. This is the man who has spent more than a decade making some of the finest music to come out of the US, in the form of Sebadoh. More recently, he has also delivered some note-perfect pop in the guise of Folk Implosion. The fact that he s ordinary, humble, honest and self-deprecating only adds to the man s genius. And he s coming to Dublin.
Barlow plays as One Part Folk Implosion on April 29th in the Temple Bar Music Centre, as part of a Domino Records night that also features Clinic and Max Tundra. Lou s other band, Sebadoh were the first act ever released on Domino over a decade ago, and the band and label have developed in tandem since.
We managed to grow with Domino and our expectations have never exceeded their s and their s never exceeded ours, he says. We always worked hard for them and vice versa. I like the label, I love their tastes and it has all worked out really well. It s pretty exceptional considering how horrible these things can go.
Both of Barlow s bands are signed with Domino, which has allowed Lou to divide his time between Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion. How do the two bands knit together? Does Sebadoh give him the chance to rid himself of aggression, for example?
I guess it does, he smiles, but I don t think about it too much. It s not like when I m playing with Sebadoh, I m going, It s really so good to be playing loud now . But that s really my roots. I started in music by putting an amp up to 11 and screaming into a mic. Certainly that s not all we do in Sebadoh but we do have the ability to do that to go from the quietest and softest to the loudest and most aggressive.
But when you re playing with two people and you re not really tying your songs down to any technology, there are still a lot of possibilities within that. It still makes a lot of sense to me on a real basic level.
So we haven t seen the last of Sebadoh, despite the success of Folk Implosion?
Well, there was the hit that Folk Implosion had years back, he sighs, but other than that, Sebadoh has been more successful than Folk Implosion, in terms of the numbers they speak of in boardrooms and all that crap.
The hit he s referring to is Natural One , a single lifted from the soundtrack to Kids, which made unlikely chart heroes out of Barlow and the other half of Folk Implosion, John Davis, going top 20 in the US. Was he surprised by its success?
Yeah, he stresses. We wrote and recorded that song within a matter of hours. There s always these stories of the hits from the sixties that were recorded in a garage in two hours, and the next week it was a hit single. I m a fan of 60s music and I thought that time had pretty much come and gone, but for us to throw a song together in the studio and have it make it to the Top 40 was just unheard of. We were being told progressively over the years that the times of something spontaneous becoming a hit were gone, but that song proved that it can still happen on some kind of level. I felt really lucky and very happy about that.
The success of Natural One , while welcome, didn t exactly make Barlow a household name, however.
I think people knew the song but I don t think they really attached any faces to it, he smiles. Plus the record it was attached to was a movie soundtrack, so there was no real album to buy, and there wasn t even a picture of us on the single.
I think we had the unique experience of having a hit but no-one knowing who we were and no-one really caring people just enjoying the song. And we were able to go about our business without worrying about any clinging, clawing hordes running after us none of the scary side of having a hit.
Honest to the point of bluntness, Barlow admits that the latest Folk Implosion opus, One Part Lullaby, has been critically well received but sales to date have been pretty low .
That could all change if new single, Free To Go gets to the audience it deserves. A shining example of pristine pop music, yet again, the song is taken from a movie soundtrack, this time the multi-oscar winning American Beauty, which Lou really loved . He freely admits that if Free To Go were to mirror the success of Natural One , he d be far from unhappy.
I ve kind of run into some lean times over the last year. It s been pretty tough monetarily, he admits. I m finding myself a little more compromised than I was before. Any kind of success I ve had, I ve usually been able to make sure it opens my creative possibilities as well. Like when Folk Implosion had the hit, I was able to actually move into a house, which was great for me, but now I need to make those house payments, so success never hurts. So if people love the new Folk Implosion single, that would be wonderful, it d be fine by me.
Lou Barlow plays the Temple Bar Music Centre on April 29th and Free To Go by Folk Implosion is released on Domino on May 12th.