Sentridoh: Wasted Pieces

The jumbled artwork adorning Sentridoh's Wasted Pieces foretells the mess inside: The chaotic, deliberately amateurish cover is filled with scribbles and appears assembled with Scotch tape. Sentridoh mastermind Lou Barlow apparently couldn't even decide what to call it: The full title may or may not be Lou B.'s Wasted Pieces…'87-'93 Now w/ More Pieces, and the band's actual name may or may not be Lou B.'s Acoustic Sentridoh. Of course, Barlow has fostered that aesthetic throughout his songwriting life, from his early days as bassist for Dinosaur Jr. to successes large and small with Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion. Nary a paragraph has been written to describe any projects that doesn't contain the early-'90s indie-album catch-all "lo-fi," or some variation thereof: For better or worse, Barlow is often credited with creating the non-genre. As gritty as Sebadoh records can be, they're positively shiny compared to Sentridoh, a Barlow project whose sounds originated on home four-track recording equipment and were circulated almost exclusively by the lowest-quality means available, cassettes. Wasted Pieces collects 31 scraps of varying sonic and songwriting quality, from flickering noise collages to gentle guitar-pop songs that could easily have graduated onto Sebadoh albums. Panning for worthwhile nuggets can be a grinding (though not fruitless) task, but fans of Barlow's confessional weirdness ought to enjoy the process. Collecting the songs on CD simplifies things, too: Seeking out the nakedly confessional a cappella "I Can't Wait" and the quietly raging "Nitemare" doesn't require Dumpster-diving through tape-hiss throwaways like "Pooh Piece" and "I Know Before…" As an album unto itself, Wasted Pieces has nothing on Sebadoh's finest moments—those would be the shimmering Bakesale and the caustic Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock—but it ought to serve diehards as an insightful, if often difficult, companion piece.