Sebadoh Puts the Accent on Heartbreaking Frustration

Any of Sebadoh singer-guitarist Lou Barlow’s seemingly endless catalog of lost-love songs could come on the radio when you were feeling brokenhearted, and you’d probably sniffle and mumble, “Yeah, Lou understands, man.”

But after hearing nearly two hours of whiny dirge after whiny dirge--as was the case at the band’s sold-out Roxy show on Wednesday--you’d be more likely to want to shake the guy and tell him to get a grip.

The packed house of youthful true believers cheered each soul-baring moment, however, calling out requests and sporadically singing along. The set ranged among selections from Sebadoh’s new album, “Harmacy,” older favorites, and one golden oldie, the thunderous J Mascis tune “Psyched to Die,” written for the band that he and Barlow were in before they formed Dinosaur Jr.

While Barlow’s lyrics are well-crafted, Sebadoh has only two basic modes--a mournful, heartbroken alterna-folk drone, and a screeching, pounding punk howl (usually perpetrated by bassist Jason Loewenstein).

The “low-fi” (shorthand for “We wouldn’t play hooks even if we had them”) trio expertly threaded these extremes together, veering from depressed to angry in the space of a downstroke. Like fellow low-fi pioneers Guided by Voices, however, Sebadoh’s short musical attention span becomes wearing, and its merits were lost in a gray haze of relentless melancholy and frustration.

The occasional departure from these mood swings, such as the almost joyful “Beauty of the Ride,” was a relief and a delight. It was then possible to believe that these same artists, as the alter-ego band Folk Implosion, did dream up a killer hook for the irresistible tune “Natural One.”

But these moments were few and far between, as the drastically reeling dynamics quickly returned. Eventually, it all felt more like an exercise than an attempt to communicate emotion through music.