ALBUM RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

The Folk Implosion

[#] Dare to Be Surprised (1997)

Reviewed December 21, 2018

Ironically more natural than "Natural One".

I have this strange habit of digging through the side projects of famous musicians before the works they're best known for. Lou Barlow might've been in Dinosaur Jr., but even if I snuggled up close to what they've been up to lately, I'll still best know him as one half of The Folk Implosion. Originally a warm, lo-fi home recording project built of bass-first indie rock and traded vocal parts, it was the fluke funky downtempo hit "Natural One" that gave Barlow and partner John Davis their first and only hit at radio. Luckily, while its sound was a bit out of the ordinary for the pair, the songwriting was pure Barlow, making it a pretty good introduction to what the group would later release as 1997's Dare to Be Surprised.

While they might've cleaned up their sound a bit, this is still the same poppy, organic, cheaply-recorded Folk Implosion that poured out like sand on Take a Look Inside.... The duo are eager to get the real earworms out early; after all, Davis fought for years for that pole position, and the constant thump of "Wide Web" and tuberculosis groove of "Insinuation" show them no less itchy. The songs here run a bit longer than Take a Look Inside's spidery vignettes, though no worse for it. Experiments still grub ("Park Dub") and dub ("Fall Into November"), and while a defiant streak has taken hold ("That's the Trick", "Ball & Chain"), the duo hit on probably one of the most innocent of indie sentiments as they float along like otters on "River Devotion": "I'll trim my whiskers and I'll wash my fur--anything for her". Dare to Be Surprised is sticky on first listen and proves handily that "Natural One" shouldn't have been a fluke.

Essential:	Quintessential:	Non-Essential:	Rating:
"Wide Web", "Insinuation", "Burning Paper" (also "Park Dub")	"Pole Position"	None!

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