| Weed Forestin' | ||||
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| Studio album by Sebadoh | ||||
| Released | 1990 | |||
| Recorded | 1986-1987 | |||
| Genre | Indie | |||
| Label | Homestead | |||
| Producer | none | |||
| Sebadoh chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [1] |
Weed Forestin is an album by the American indie rock band, Sebadoh. It was self-released by Lou Barlow on cassette in 1987, under the guise Sentridoh, and sold at record stores in his native Massachusetts. It was officially released by Homestead on vinyl in 1990.
The album was re-released on CD in 1990 on the Homestead compilation album The Freed Weed, which also contains a number of songs from the band's debut album, The Freed Man.
Weed Forestin' was recorded on a 4-track in 1986 and 1987, when Barlow was the bassist of the American indie rock band, Dinosaur Jr. Sebadoh, which Barlow co-founded with Eric Gaffney, started as a songwriting outlet for Barlow outside of Dinosaur Jr, whose lead singer and guitarist, J. Mascis, Barlow would later publicly clash with.
The album was named after a lyric in the Barlow song "Lose," which was not included in Weed Forestin but reworked into a Dinosaur Jr. song on their 1987 album, You're Living All Over Me. In his July 2011 newsletter, Barlow explained that "i was -not- high on marijuana when i recorded this.. 'weed forestin' meant making the most out of what i had, foresting weeds instead of trees." [2]
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Weed Forestin', like The Freed Man, epitomizes the lo-fi aesthetic that Sebadoh helped popularize in the indie rock scene of the early 1990s, with their landmark album Sebadoh III (1991). However, the recording quality of these two albums is lower than any subsequent Sebadoh albums.
The songs feature Barlow on a Stella acoustic guitar, an acoustic baritone ukulele, and vocals. Gaffney plays percussion on the songs "New Worship," "More Simple," "Ride the Darker Wave" and "I Can't See." Several tracks are linked together by tape samples and collages.
Weed Forestin' is the most Barlow-centric of any Sebadoh album - more so than The Freed Man, which was recorded in 1988 and features a number of Gaffney's songs. The band became a three-piece in 1989 with the arrival of Jason Loewenstein, and all future Sebadoh albums feature songwriting contributions from Barlow, Loewenstein and other members, including Gaffney until his departure in 1994.
Following Sebadoh's evolution into a traditional band in the early 1990s, Barlow continued to record at home under the Sentridoh name.
Allmusic's Richie Unterberger praised the album for Barlow's "appealing voice, sensitive wit, and knack for affected burned-out acid-folk," but wrote "the merits are often buried beneath hiss and tomfoolery, as if [Barlow] wasn't convinced his music was any good on its own terms, and so tried to pretend it was all a joke."
However, in a 2004 interview with The Onion, Barlow said that he "really worked on" his early home recordings, citing Weed Forestin' and his Sentridoh material in particular, but "realized that in the end, because it was [recorded] on four-track cassette, a large group of people weren't going to take it seriously. But that was all I had, you know? If we'd had Pro Tools when I was 21? With that kind of energy, and those kind of ideas just fuckin' rushing at me? I could've made something that didn't have tape hiss on it, so people would think it was "legitimate." [2]
These recordings gained Barlow support from Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth's drummer, Steve Shelley, released the Sentridoh single "Losercore" on his Smells Like Records label in 1990.
Three songs from the album - "It's So Hard to Fall in Love," "Brand New Love" and "I Believe in Fate" - were covered by the American indie rock band Superchunk on their 1991 EP, The Freed Seed.
British artist Daryl Waller made stop-motion films named after and based on the songs "It's So Hard to Fall in Love" and "Brand New Love" in the early 2000's.
In his July 2011 newsletter, Barlow wrote that he had started work on a proper Weed Forestin' reissue, and that it would be self-released on vinyl and digitally. [3]
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