Consumer Guide Album

Sebadoh: The Freed Weed [Homestead, 1990]
What do we know about a subculture where a CD of two bedroom tapes becomes a consumer durable? Who besides talent scouts (and tolerant ones at that) would lay out rent money for a succession of fragments-segued-into-fragments described by one admirer as "mostly written while they're being recorded and rarely played again"? Assuming they've ever paid the rent in their lives, I mean? Maybe kids who crave intimacy as much as amateur sociologists claim--so much that they turn musical doodles into love objects, attributing to them the imaginary smarts and cutes long-distance crushes so often impart. Those of us who prefer talent will make out maybe four tunes amid the strum and clatter, including the autodestructing "Soul Mate" and the thematic "Temporary Dream." Inspirational Verse (literally, it's recited): "But if you see what you need in me/Then you can't have what you need." D