Sebadoh + Octa#grape – Bunk Bar

It’s a sandwich shop with a bar, but it’s still a sandwich shop. An old friend who lives in Oakland now is here with me, his visit scheduled, in part, around this show. “Do you want a new song or an old song?” Lou Barlow asks. Enthusiastic cheers for another old song cascade through the crowd, and Barlow winces in disappointment. “Thanks a lot.”

Barlow has a brand new love, a brand new beard, and a brand new album due out in another month, but he is touring with his much-beloved former band, and judging from the way the people around us sing along, my friend and I aren’t the only ones at Portland’s Bunk Bar more interested in reveling in the past than appreciating Sebadoh’s newfound present tense.

It’s a good thing, too. The band is on only the third date of its tour and still rusty. Only the goodwill Barlow built over the years is enough to keep us from walking out. Still, there are moments — the ascending opening riff to “Rebound,” the driving toms of “Beauty of the Ride,” the poignant ache of “Not a Friend” — where nostalgia wells up and fills in the gaps between our memories and the performance before us.

After closing the show with “Homemade,” an ode to spoiled intimacy now twenty years old, Barlow apologizes for playing so poorly and promises to be better the next time he and the band come through. In so doing, the once and future indie king of self-sabotage undermines all that went right that evening, leaving us to head out into the early twilight of our own next time, find the car we left in the shadow of the Morrison Bridge, and drive back the way we came.