I'll make 'No Bones' about it, I'm a huge fan of Dinosaur Jr, and love everything they've done with the exception of 'Without a Sound,' which I find rather dull and uninspired. However, Mascis' solo work is something I've never really got into, and similarly, the bits and pieces that I've heard of Lou Barlow's other projects have failed to excite me.
However, I'm always willing to give an album a listen, and I'm coming to 'Goodnight Unknown,' Barlow's second solo effort, with fresh ears. Opener 'Sharing' is promising enough, propelled as it is by some powerhouse drumming courtesy of Melvins' Dale Crover. The title track's a little less energetic, but is driven by some nice overloaded guitar sounds countered by a light vocal melody.
After this brace of perfectly passable alt-rock, there's a shift into acoustic mode. However, try as I might, I just can't really get into this. There are some tracks that do grab my attention: 'The Right' shares elements of melody with a number of tracks off the first Foo Fighters album and has some nicely interwoven guitar motifs. Such attention to detail, that appears to be absent from many of the songs, highlight the potential rather than the actuality of the album as a whole. Thus, while some tracks do definitely deserve repeat listening essential in order to fully appreciate what's going on, a lot of the material is too simple to really engage.
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There's a large portion of trippy sixties-style folk served up on tracks like 'Gravitate,' and this comes with a generous side-order of lo-fi slacker tude, dude. The trouble with 'lo-fi' and 'slacker' is that they seem very much like synonyms for 'lazy' and 'can't be arsed,' particularly where playing and production are concerned. There's no shortage of evidence that Barlow can play, and most of the songs are pleasant enough, but some lazy rhymes in the lyrics and the sense that some of the tracks could have been so much more given a little more time and development make for an album that's ultimately disappointing.
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