One Part Lullaby

Folk Implosion

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 7, 1999)
• Original Release Date: September 7, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Interscope Records
• ASIN: B00000K3W7
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #109,903 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
The Folk Implosion duo Lou Barlow and John Davis offer a kaleidoscope of tracks on One Part Lullaby, turning through a lucid dream state of lyrical introspection. Thickly padded, moderately paced hop-hop rhythms synced with distorted guitars, rolling snares, and simple keyboard touches lend a powerfully hypnotic quality to the alt-rock wash. Its warm, steady flow bestows on the listener a sort of clairvoyance that remembers birth, foresees death, and relives all the good stuff in between. --Beth Massa

Amazon.com
It isn't like anybody has been waiting around for "the great L.A. album," but several bands (Guns N' Roses, Hole) have nevertheless tried to make it. Who would expect that it would finally be done by a hung-up East Coast Romeo who followed his love to Los Angeles and found the city strangely to his liking? Folk Implosion singer-lyricist Lou Barlow is noted for his dejected love songs, and now he sings them to a city unsympathetic and detached, made of concrete and overpasses and not one to fall in love. Barlow is lucky that John Davis, his partner in the duo, is more sympathetic to his new metropolitan muse than his roughshod cohorts in Sebadoh. Davis layers dense ribbons of guitar and rhythms to re-create both the hazy pall of pollution that hangs over the city and the complex social strata that lives beneath it. Barlow's lyrics reference both his flight from the East and his "following the setting sun" to arrive in paradise. The centerpiece of this song cycle is "Easy L.A." with it Tupac-y vocoder chorus and sophisticated electronic hum. "Here I am / Never thought I'd be / Among the drifters and directors / A place for me / It's nothing like I thought it was after all." This album is less a lullaby and more a valentine to America's enigmatic oasis. --Lois Maffeo

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "One Part Lullaby" Is the Most Gorgeous Power Lilt of Year, September 12, 1999

By A Customer

It's not often that you find albums without any waste, but The Folk Implosion's new disc, "One Part Lullaby," defies ordinary music. Each track here counts, both lyrically and musically.

"One Part Lullaby" is collaboration at its finest. Lou Barlow and John Davis feed beautifully off one another, with Barlow's dreamy, rich voice glancing off Davis's inventive guitar riffs. Folk Implosion invariably layers in quirky sounds, but the textures behind the music are stunningly elegant, never distracting. The percussion, whether driving or subtle, offers hypnotic catchiness.

Folk Implosion's elliptically raw lyrics, however, are what make "One Part Lullaby" burrow into one's consciousness. The story behind the songs is not always clear. Nonetheless, you invariably get the feeling that, somehow, every word of every song was transcribed out of one of your own dreams.

Our parents should all sing such powerful lullabies.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a different kind of rock-rap fusion, March 22, 2000

By	[e-mail] (swarthmore pa) - See all my reviews

Though their name is rather less accurate than Jon Spencer's somewhat similarly-minded Blues Explosion, bi-coastal duo Folk Implosion clearly have something in common with the folkies of the early and mid sixties. In addition to the attitude and honesty of the lyrics, the emphasis here is on experimentation and using familiar elements to create something undeniably - much as Dylan and his compatriots transformed the American folk-song tradition into a vital and new art form. In terms of the way the music actually sounds, however, it might be better described as rock and roll fused with hip-hop. That said, this is the furthest thing imaginable from recently successful slew "rap-rock" acts (Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, and the rest.) Those performers take advantage of the fact that rap takes the emphasis off of melody, but neglect to adopt any of its smoothly rhythmic poetry, and they revive the tired "classic" metal riffage from which Public Enemy successfully freed hip-hop back in 1989, without borrowing from the many interesting turns rock music has taken since 1977, or even the ingrained funkiness which hip-hop has inherited from decades of black dance music. Despite the sublime assortment of loping, multi-layered hip-hop beats, both live and computer-generated, as loose and innocent as Three Feet High-era De La Soul, which grace the majority of the tracks on One Part Lullaby, the rap correlation isn't all that obvious. By far the most interest in Folk Implosion comes from fans of Lou Barlow's earlier work. While not a household name in most of the country, Barlow, whose credits here include fifteen entries (as compared to partner John Davis' twelve - optigan, glockenspiel, psaltry, dulcimer, drum machine, and cookie sheet, among others), holds a firm place in the pantheon of nineties indie guitar rock as front-man for the band Sebadoh. That extremely influential group, which more or less pioneered lo-fi, has released numerous albums since Barlow's expulsion from Dinosaur Jr. in the late eighties, including their masterpiece, 1991's epic Sebadoh III. Folk Implosion, a somewhat mellower, more dance-oriented side project, had a minor top-40 hit in 1994 with "Natural One," but it wasn't until this year that they managed to reach a significant portion of listeners with this unique, phenomenally-crafted album. In a nutshell, this is a remarkably consistent collection of well-written rock songs, with strong pop-hooks, occasionally danceable but never heavy-handed grooves, playfulness, energy, bite, and intelligent lyrics (check out the superb coming-of-age song "Free to Go" - also the album's most easily accessible track music-wise.) Is it good? Hell yes.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Martyrs of the New and Magic kind, December 26, 2000

By	Glorybox - See all my reviews

Without a doubt, this is one of my favorite albums. The Folk Implosion is a collaboration between "Sebadoh"'s lead singer Lou Barlow and the independent songwriter/experimentalist John Davis, "One Part Lullaby" being their third album together but their first on a major label (Interscope). The two artists are still faithful to their lo-fi/indie genre backgrounds, although there is certainly a "cleaner" sound (a "big record company" side-effect, but not necessarily a turn for the worst in this particular case). The outcome is a magnificent recording and true American-alternative music (read: that won't get any air play...).

Both Barlow and Davis are creative and accomplished musicians, and they clearly stand up with musical ingenuity on this album: more than fifteen instruments (from guitars, harps and xylophones through glasses of water and cookie sheets : yes they're proud of it and yes, you will be too); loops and samples of their own music; drifts from Minor to Major scales, and so on. Just the way they literally craft a song is outstanding, most tracks beginning with a few seconds in which they install the melody and background effects, just before Barlow's beautiful voice and poetry gives rise to polished jewels of songs. The album opens with the excellent "My Ritual", lyrically impressive and a great choice for an introduction, followed by "One Part Lullaby", tender, soft and highly emotional because of its powerful chorus. Then comes "Free to Go", the first single, upbeat and joyful, and which made the cut for the soundtrack of the Oscar-acclaimed 1999 movie "American Beauty", following in the footsteps of 1995's "Natural One" on the "Kids"' Soundtrack (taken from their second album "Dare to Be Surprised"). Track number four is an instrumental remix named "Serge", due to the fact that it samples famous French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg's song "Requiem pour un Con". The rest of the album is very good, but the songs are less remarkable than the record's first few tracks, maybe except for E.Z. L.A. (ethereal, in which Barlow describes his happiness of living now in the City of Angels) and the reassuring "No Need to Worry".

All in all, this is a brilliant, smooth, distinct, personal and addictive album, a gem of a rare kind, an oasis in today's mainstream "alternative" music.