Kids
Given his endless roster of side projects in addition to his main gig, Sebadoh, it would seem Lou Barlow just can't get enough of himself. But as the king of lo-fi, it's Lou's job to be a compulsive releaser of material. In committing so much to tape, Barlow gives us an intimate view of a songwriter in all his moods and various states of polish. Barlow appears on 9 of 13 cuts on the soundtrack of the much-discussed filmKids, mainly as part of a duo with John Davis called Folk Implosion. While there's a spare Sebadoh oldie ("Spoiled") and an angry punk exorcism from the four-man Deluxx Folk Implosion ("Daddy Never Understood"), mostly we hear Barlow in mellow dance mode with the groove-based Implosion. Over trancelike mechanical beats and synth effects that verge on ambient at times, Barlow delivers vocals in as plain and funky a style as a nerdy white boy can. It's a shame that songs like "Natural One" and "Wet Stuff" barely appear in the film; they create a perfect backdrop forKids' confused adolescents.--Roni Sarig