Whatever Keeps Them High: Lou Barlow on the Return of the Folk Implosion

If you grew up listening to alternative rock, you know Lou Barlow from somewhere.

Maybe you dug the smudgy, Neil-powered psych-grunge of Dinosaur Jr. in the late ‘80s, which began motoring along again in 2007 with the original lineup and no serious changes in sound or principle, much to old heads’ delight. Maybe you spent the ‘90s putting Barlow’s cheap, catchy Sebadoh tunes onto mixtapes for friends and considered him the original sensitive lo-fi archetype long before indie-rock had spawned Death Cab for Cutie (who’ve since covered “Brand New Love”).

Even if your regular rock dosage only came from left-of-center radio, you were steeped in constant airplay for “Natural One,” the Folk Implosion’s spooky-seductive Top 40 hit from the soundtrack to the movie Kids. One of the ultimate ‘90s songs you know even if you couldn’t name the band or song title at gunpoint, its creepy central riff has been rattling around your consciousness for decades even though it only just became Spotify-available.

The Folk Implosion were maybe the unlikeliest of Barlow’s projects to hit big, just a ramshackle bedroom project from the duo of him and John Davis, who originally left shortly after 1999’s beautiful, sampladelic major-label bow One Part Lullaby. Now they’ve made their first music together in a quarter-century, Walk Thru Me, a return to their homemade beginnings before things got strange. I spoke with Barlow via phone about how this came to be and the odd place the Folk Implosion occupy in the continuum of his own history and indie-rock altogether.

 

This was an interesting interview to prepare for because I have, like, four comfort albums of yours that I know super well and I listen to them all the time. And I forget sometimes how much other music you’ve made and had to reacquaint myself with. So when you engage with fans, is it interesting not knowing which corner of your work they’re coming from?

Kind of. I always have to be like, “Okay, what is this one?” This person is a Dino person. Is this a Bakesale person? Is this like a Sentridoh, hardcore lo-fi person? Folk Implosion? They’re all kind of different, you know? And there’s very few people [who like them all]. I mean, I consider this a good thing. People who are familiar with my stuff tell me all the time, like, “I didn’t know you were in Dinosaur Jr.”

 

Do your different fanbases have different personalities or things in common?

Well, I don’t want to make generalizations about people, but yeah, sorta. I mean, if there’s kids who are into Sentridoh or something, they could be really young kids wearing thrift store clothes and asking me about really obscure stuff in an interview. And then there could be somebody who’s really liked one of my solo records, but also likes, like, Josh Groban. I’ve done solo tours where I would have dinner with people for, like, an extra price. [Laughs.] You know, come have dinner with me. I’ve met so many different people who were focused on different parts of my catalog. Some people knew I was in Deep Wound, and they were just really into that and hardcore.

 

AUDIO: Deep Wound EP

That’s definitely a good thing to reach all different types of people. Even Folk Implosion alone, there aren’t many bands that have as disparate a career; I was trying to think of anything to compare it to. Maybe Scritti Politti, who started out post-punk and pop up every 15 years sounding completely different.

I like it. I like any relation to post-punk, especially the post-punk of the late ‘70s that did this crazy right turn into New Romantic and it’s totally almost politically opposed to it as well. But I love that comparison. I think that’s great.

 

We might even be seeing that in some kind of cycle, the way indie-rock started taking on R&B and synth-pop components all through the last ten years.

I thought the 2000s were great for indie rock. Everything really diversified and just became more rich and textured. And the songwriting really went through the roof. There are just so many cool bands.

 

Any particular ones come to mind as big favorites?

I was just listening to Earth, Wind & Fire. And then Sly Stone came on and I’m like, what? For some reason, it reminded me of this Unknown Mortal Orchestra record. I can’t remember what year it was, but they made this incredible-sounding record. Their first album, it was R&B-ish a little bit, with incredible guitar, but they had a really unique production. In the 2000s and 2010s, bands really started to produce themselves in really unique ways. That early Tame Impala stuff that’s self-produced, like, psych-rock and it sounds fucking great because they did it all, and Death Cab for Cutie, Grizzly Bear, all these bands, they self-produced and made incredible sounding records.

 

So is there a defining trait of the Folk Implosion in your mind? When you revisit the band with John after 25 years, what did it require you to refresh yourself on?

Nothing really. I mean, the minute that we started playing together, it’s like we’re back. I felt that way with Dinosaur Jr. too. When I rejoined Dinosaur Jr., it was just like, Oh, okay, there’s no other way to play than what I’m gonna play with this person.” When I play with John, especially if we play bass and guitar together, immediately things start happening. Things start coming together. We have an immediate chemistry that was the defining part of the band to me, and also the willingness that we both have to talk about what we’re doing. It can be hard to make musicians talk about what they’re doing. Let’s jam a little bit and then talk about it. With John, I can really cut to the chase and that’s really refreshing.

 

 

Was there any discussion of returning to samples or hip-hop loops?

I don’t think this new record is beat-driven. I think that’s a consequence of the fact that we aren’t really living in close proximity, because when we’ve really gotten into it rhythmically, we’ve been in really close contact with constant, like real communication about it. And it has to be, like, in the moment in the studio with a lot of time to experiment, but we didn’t really have time to experiment in person. We had to get right down to the nuts and bolts of the songs. It’s less beat-oriented than One Part Lullaby and certainly the Kids soundtrack.

 

It’s a return to a more delicate, homespun sound, even if you guys were kind of across the way from each other. I’m not the first person to say this, but there’s some actual folk in there, it sounds like.

Yeah, I haven’t figured out exactly what the new record is.

 

Well, it shares a kinship with some of, I guess, the new class of DIY stuff that we were talking about before. I’ve seen Alex G compared to you, and I think this fits in with some of the quote-unquote bedroom musicians of the last several years.

I didn’t really bring any particular influence into this record. There wasn’t as much in-person experimentation.

 

When you’re writing songs, is it very collaborator-dependent, or do you have a stockpile of things you’re trying to sort, like, “This is for Sebadoh, I’m probably gonna pitch this to John?”

I guess with John, I wanted it to come totally from the two of us on this one. Even though in the past, we both brought riffs and things to it, this one we didn’t do as much. I think we really tried to make it as organically us as possible. The whole record is written off of, like, three days we spent in my attic in the middle of July, It was insanely hot. 

 

It’s hard not to use the Implosion name as shorthand when discussing alt-rock with hip-hop beats, like Beck. I’ve listened to One Part Lullaby probably more than any of the other ones combined, so it was jarring for me to find out that it bricked commercially. So Sebadoh was on Sire at the time, right? And Lullaby was Interscope?

Yeah.

 

Did it drive you insane to suddenly be navigating the whims of two major labels?

No, I think both records were declared dead in the water pretty quick. So it wasn’t, like, really an agonizing period. Like, Sebadoh was dropped from Sire two weeks after the release of The Sebadoh, and then, I mean, John left the band when the [Folk Implosion] record was released. So I went on and kind of did some stuff like shows solo, trying to represent One Part Lullaby. It was an experience, but I was very philosophical about it, that’s all I can say. I had a friend who traveled with me who was my sound guy and my tour manager, and we just traveled around and did these strange, lonely Folk Implosion shows. I was still part of Interscope at that point, and it was pretty fascinating because they would take me to radio stations and things to promote the record but it was just so clear no one was interested. I would say that it was sobering, but that would assume that I was expecting anything.

 

VIDEO: The Folk Implosion “Bobblehead Doll”

Limp Bizkit was on Interscope at the time, too. Did you ever cross paths?

The story is that we signed to Interscope because at the time, they were actually like a boutique label. They really didn’t have that many bands, but they did have Limp Bizkit and Fred Durst had his own wing of the label and they had recently separated from Death Row. So they had a limited roster of bands, but right when our record was released, the record industry fucking shit the bed. All those labels like A&M and Geffen fucking completely fired half their staffs. And Interscope subsumed all of these labels.

The guy that signed us to Interscope, Tom Whalley, was kind of cold. He was a real nut, I don’t know how to describe it, but he’s like a hard A&R guy. You know what I mean? He wasn’t kissing our asses. He was like, “I don’t know, maybe your stuff can move.” They were like, you guys can do whatever you want. We gave them the record cover and they’re like, this is a terrible record cover, but if this is what you want… When the record was released, all of a sudden, I remember it happened on the tour, they were promoting my record and they were like, “oh, well we really gotta push the Sting single at this stop.” All of a sudden we were labelmates with Sting. 

 

One of my favorite bands, Dismemberment Plan, recorded their biggest album with Interscope’s advance and then they dropped them before it was released.

After One Part Lullaby, they were like, “you got another record, try again.” Wally Gagel, who produced Lullaby, was on board so he and I tried to make a Folk Implosion record. And then they’re like, “no, we don’t wanna do this, take the record, it’s yours.” They just gave me all the stuff that I worked on and I eventually cobbled everything together from sessions that Interscope had paid for and I made The New Folk Implosion record. So it was like…

 

A parting gift?

Yeah, no hard feelings. 

 

What made you decide to re-record “Kingdom of Lies” after the Life Less Ordinary version?

Wally got a hold of an early version of Pro Tools, his friend had it, and they put “Kingdom of Lies” into that and it sounded way better than the original version. They dumped it to Pro Tools, tightened it up, and augmented the beats. 

 

I know that you’ve said you didn’t really expect there to be any kind of follow-up to “Natural One,” but I was surprised that that song wasn’t it. They both share that sexy, sinister energy.

I was super into it. I really, I loved One Part Lullaby. John and I both did. I think what brought us together was the fact that we both really feel that that record is good. Like, we actually made a good record, whether anybody knows it. It can stand head and shoulders with anything from that time period. It’s a pretty good fucking record.

It might’ve been the first thing I’ve ever heard of yours. In seventh grade, my friend Tracy was much cooler than me, her father worked for a local paper, and he would bring home promo CDs and she would share them with me. I’m pretty sure that was my first exposure to anything that you ever did. I remember poring over the credits and looking at this insane list of instruments being like, “what is all this?”

Yeah, it was good for the imagination.

 

I know that you’ve said that “Natural One” didn’t really make your lives too different, but did any craziness happen in its wake? Did MTV want you to play spring break or did any rappers reach out?

The only thing that really pops out is we got offered an opening slot for White Zombie in Asia. We didn’t do that. We didn’t really have a band and we were in way over our heads immediately.

 

That would have been quite a bill.

We were still a garage band. We had no idea. It would have taken a lot of money and we didn’t have money. We didn’t really have a lot of resources. The Kids soundtrack was awesome because we were just handed studio time and Interscope took care of all of our whims as far as how we recorded things. But beyond that, you have to sell records to get the money to make a show and do all that shit. 

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.