The Folk Implosion – Dare to be Surprised – Review

The Folk Implosion

Dare to be Surprised (Communion)
by Nik Rainey

It was with a distinct gust of mortality worse than discovering my first gray pube that I realized this: It’s been ten years since the release of Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me. That epochal elpee still sounds great today, and yet it’s hard to express what an everlovin’ mindblower it was at the time – this trio of college-town losers stumbled upon a sound that drew from the full-volume ferocity of punk, skipped across the sea of possibilities that art-noise mavens Sonic Youth opened up for exploration, and slathered itself with seventies jam at a time when it had almost no value even as sonic junk food, a filthy rock that turned out to be a diamond. And as a free bonus, the last song, bassist Lou Barlow’s “Poledo,” was the first salvo of what became the lo-fi revolution. (Historians call it “The Shot Barely Heard Around The World Due To All The Hiss.”) Never again did you have to scream like a Janov grad with a Flying-V to express your hormonal miseries – a plaintive mumble serves just as well. (Of course, this meant that these guys were more guilty than either Doug Coupland or Rich Linklater for founding the cult of the damned slacker, but that’s as may be, it’s still a frog worth licking.)

Few of us could have predicted the divergent fortunes of the Dinos a decade later – lead moper J Mascis 86’d Barlow from the band and has spent the ensuing years grinding away on the same worn-out groove, making increasingly self-parodic records pulled up from the same well of moan ‘n’ wank, whereas Barlow has become the toast of Indietown, the kinda guy who has more side projects than you have back hairs. It was one of those side projects, The Folk Implosion, that scored a surprise hit a couple years back with “Natural One,” a torpid groove from the soundtrack to the feel-sick film of ’95, Kids. And now Barlow and fellow Implosionist John Davis are out to consolidate their gains with a new album, Dare to Be Surprised, which cuts a neat swath down the middle ‘twixt no-fi messiness and the strictures imposed by a real studio.

It’s pretty keen stuff, too, stuffed to bursting with pop ideas and enough smarts not to dwell on any of them for too long. “Insinuation” most strongly recalls their hit, with upfront beats and a nicely affected guitar sound. “Barricade” is an agreeably halting stray-pink-panther strut; “Checking In” an airy pop plod; “Burning Paper” an asymmetrical bye-bye love song (with an instrumental version, “(Blank Paper),” immediately following for no apparent reason other than to say, “Can you believe we actually got a coherent song out of this backing track?”). “Fall Into November” is a personal fave, a quiet anthem that reaches singalong ecstasy without bothering to overemote to get there. I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea – now that Sebadoh’s curbed most of its self-indulgences, the Implosion revels in them and somehow makes them lively. Which is more than I can say for Lou’s former boss. Hey, J, wake up and feel this pain.