Lou Barlow as Sentridoh, Mirror the Eye

by dave heaton

There's a dark side of Lou Barlow's music that was largely missing from his last solo album Emoh, the Folk Implosion albums, and even the last Sebadoh album or two. It's fitting, perhaps, that here he uses the name Lou Barlow as Sentridoh, his old home-taping name, as this EP gets back to that darkness, that intensity, that persona of someone way into analyzing himself and everything around him. (Back to the home-taping, too.) The first song "Yawning Blue Messiah" has some of the singer/songwriter demeanor of Emoh, but is a serious trip: "I miss you brother / I hate your guts / whatever inside you that made me regret what was." There's a real seriousness to Mirror the Eye: part Goth, part folk. But there's also a desire to screw around – witness the near-punk of "Faith Defies the Night" or the heightened anxiety that cuts through "You're a Goat" like an invading force.

It's all overwrought, but the best of Lou Barlow's music has always been. The catchiest melodies cut through murk built from layers of doubt and anxiety, but when they do, as on the title track, it lifts the music up even higher, into a brilliant kind of mess.

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