The Folk Implosion: One Part Lullaby

In the bizarre and insular world of indie-rock, mainstream success is magnified, or at least distorted: Elliott Smith playing the Oscars alongside Trisha Yearwood and Celine Dion is too surreal to even comprehend, and most seem to have dismissed it as a fluke, but The Folk Implosion cracking the Top 40 with "Natural One" was a career-redefining event. A beat-driven, Steve Miller-derivative goof from the Kids soundtrack, "Natural One" seemed to radically change the worlds of its creators, John Davis and Lou Barlow (of Sebadoh and Dinosaur Jr fame). The title track from One Part Lullaby prominently includes the line, "I'm not a rebel or the natural one," and the sticker on the cover reads, "The new album from the band that brought you 'Natural One.'" That's a lot of fuss over such a minor song, but the perils of success sure don't sound like a burden on One Part Lullaby, a relentlessly outstanding batch of sly, slick, musically inventive pop songs. Where Sebadoh's disappointing The Sebadoh sounded like an aimless rejection of Barlow's relative success, One Part Lullaby seems to revel in it, dishing out brightly accessible pop that works whether it's trying to be pretty ("No Need To Worry") or sinister ("My Ritual"). Tricked-out with unobtrusive quirks and gadgets—check out the Vocoder on "E.Z. L.A.," or "Serge," an instrumental that doesn't feel like filler—the results stand up as carefully constructed, well-conceived pop songs. Barlow has been dogged by creative inconsistency in the past, but here, he and Davis seem incapable of missing their mark.