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Album Reviews
Album review: Sebadoh – Bakesale (Domino)
By Paul Vig | Published on Friday 18 February 2011
What’s this, Vigsy gone grunge? Has the world gone mad? Okay, you may know me as CMU’s resident dance music man, but back in my troubled youth Sebadoh’s ‘Bakesale’ also snuck its way onto my CD player. And with a re-release of said long player now in the pipeline, it’s time for me to return to rock.
If you never came across this album when it was first released in 1994, it was perhaps somewhere between Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Seventeen years on, my favourite tracks from back then remain the same: the angry ‘Not Too Amused’, the slightly madcap uptempo ‘License To Confuse’, the rocking ‘Careful’ and the distorted chords of the ballad ‘Got It’. While the anger and aggression in ‘Drama Mine’ is still awesome.
It is a varied album ‘Dreams’ and ‘Mystery Man’ are slow paced, and ‘Magnet’s Coil’ and ‘Skull’ are a tad poppy. ‘Give Up’ has a quirky folk feel, albeit juxtaposed by hard metal chords, which somehow works. Anne Slinn’s vocals in ‘Temptation Tide’ add diversity, and the melancholy end track ‘Together Or Alone’ has an air of beauty.
I may have rose tinted glasses on here, but I have really enjoyed a revisiting what was an exemplary slab of alternative 90s rock. The re-release will have a bonus disc of 25 tracks from this period which will increase the value of tracking down this LP once more. PV
Physical release: 4 Apr