Sebadoh Have Another Bakesale

If you know anything about anything, you know that Sebadoh's Bakesale is a legendary album and pretty much defines what it means to be a perfect indie rock record. So how do you improve upon perfection? Well, you celebrate it with a deluxe reissue that has a second disc containing not five, not ten, but twenty-five bonus tracks that covers every aspect of this record from beginning to end and everything in between. Bakesale is now an epic release that might be too much for some to take in.

Totaling 40 tracks in all, the Bakesale reissue redefines perfection by cramming so much music in such a small space it's like having a portable box set at your disposable. The first disc is completely remastered and all shiny and sparkly and freaking amazing. Having not listened to the album in a while, I forgot just how masterful and uh, remastered it is. So we know disc one, the original album is fantastic, but the really exciting part of this reissue is the 25 bonus tracks on disc two.

Disco two opens with a jumbled garbled mess called, "MOR Backlash," and winds its way through the remaining 24 tracks with all sorts of detours into weird, wacky, and kind of bad territory. For the most part though much of disc two is filled with hidden gems, b-sides, and god only knows what else. You get to hear Lou Barlow strum his way acoustically across songs that appear on disc one. It's good stuff and shows another side of the often rambunctious nature of the band. Among the highlights of the songs are all the demo's that appear; “Not A Friend,” “Mystery Man,” and “Perfect Way”. "Rebound," as an acoustic version is so fragile it sounds like it's going to split in half; that's probably my favorite track on disc two. Taking it all in, this is an absolutely crazy mess of songs that kind of gives you an insight into the Sebadoh creative process. It's a bit scattershot at times, but it is enjoyable...even the bad stuff.

Is Bakesale worth re-buying the album for all this material? Simply put, yes. In other words, if you've ever considered yourself a fan of Lou and Sebadoh...you probably need all this material in your life.