🎵 Sebadoh - Sunshine: I’m still deciding how I feel about the majority of the new Sebadoh album, Celebrate The Void. Sebadoh and I have a long history and it has been about 27 years since I heard that the bassist who got kicked out of Dinosaur Jr. had his own band. At the time I nearly flipped my lid. In the fall of 1994, I went to see Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr. within a week of each other and teased Lou Barlow a bit about it while getting to hang out with him as well as Mike Flood at the merch table (I didn’t ride with the flood that night).

Although, it’s hard to call such a unique and prolific band “consistent,” I would maintain that the majority of their records have a sizable number of songs that have stuck closely with me throughout the years. Even the previous record, Defend Yourself, which appeared after a fairly lengthy hiatus, has a couple of tracks that rank among their better material.

It’s hard to predict how the latest record will age, though. I’ve liked it better than I thought I would and the track “Sunshine” is one reason for that. Barlow’s clever lyrics about needing the brighter side of life so he can shut it out speaks to a part of the human condition that’s hard to name or even describe well. The slow and angular guitar part lazily wraps itself around some soothing negative space. The classically and unmistakably Sebadoh baseline anchors the song and gives it a bit of a jaunty feeling. The whole song comes together as a remarkable entry in the band’s catalog and makes you glad they are still doing their thing.

Most of the Record Store Day exclusives recently have not been my cup of tea. However, this year, one release in particular caught my eye after the tragic death of Richard Swift.

Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard will pay tribute to friend and collaborator Richard Swift with a new 7-inch split single featuring two unreleased tracks recorded by the pair. The A-side is an unreleased demo of “Me and Magdalena” which Gibbard wrote for The Monkees’ 2016 album Good Times!. The B-side is an alternate unreleased version of Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept” from Gibbard’s cover of the band’s Bandwagonesque album, which he released in 2017. Limited to 1,600 copies, with proceeds benefiting MusiCares.

I can vouch for the quality of the album version of Gibbard’s cover of “The Concept” from his full-length take on Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. It will be interesting to listen to the alternate version. Many times, with Swift’s production, you can hear his style in the recording. I think I get just as much of Swift as I do Jurado on Damien Jurado’s “A.M. AM.”.