Emoh is the first, official solo album from Lou Barlow: the bard of lo-fi, erstwhile leader of Sebadoh, The Folk Implosion and Sentridoh, former bass player for Dinosaur Jr... Before Beck, Cat Power or even Pavement, Sebadoh was rocking the underground as "the quintessential lo-fi band of the '90s" (All Music Guide) and Lou has become hero to young singer/songwriters with their hearts on sleeve and a punk-rock fire in their loins. For followers of Lou Barlow, who've been there since Sebadoh formed in 1987, it's certainly been awhile. Lou's previous solo collection, Winning Losers: A Collection of Home Recordings (Smells Like Records, 1994), and the many self-released Sentridoh releases, the most recent being Sentridoh - Free Sentridoh Songs From Loobiecore in 2002, have hinted at the Lou's personal vision, but this is the record for which many Lou Barlow fans have hoped, yet dare not hope. There is much to recommend here - an amazing songwriting growth in a long-time hero, the instantly recognisable warmth of a much-loved voice, a brace of tunes you don't have to wade through the tape-hiss to hear... Let's take a moment to relish this prospect - the lo-fi prodigal son has come home! "I always felt that I was going to write like Hank Williams: simple things," Lou recently told The Onion. "When I start to write a song, I have the words and I have the melody, and then it's just a matter of making it to the end. I think if I have something that I could identify as a talent, it would be that I can finish a song. I kind of know intuitively where the melody should go. But that's something that comes not from listening to other records, but from something that's just in me." Emoh is a lush, well-produced affair with eight tracks recorded with producers like Nashville's Mark Nevers (Lambchop), Josh Schwartz (not the guy who created The O.C.) and Wally Gagel (Boston's finest, Folk Implosion associate, and alumni of the Fort Apache studio/hit-factory) and six tracks impeccably recorded at home by Barlow himself. And not 'in the bathroom with a cassette player', either. Though, as Lou admitted recently, "If we'd had Pro Tools when I was 21, with that kind of energy, and those kind of ideas just rushing at me, I could've made something that didn't have tape hiss on it, so people would think it was 'legitimate'. I would've made huge, sprawling masterpieces! I believe that. Because it was all about the energy. Certain Sentridoh stuff I did, I really worked on those things, but when I was working on them, I realised that in the end, because it was on four-track cassette, a large group of people weren't going to take it seriously. But that was all I had, you know?" Leaving the lo-fi behind, Barlow takes his place as an indie rock elder-statesman and a modern day folk-rocker. The tunes are to the fore, with an upbeat swing. The lyrics are sharp, painfully honest (the jealousy-riven 'Royalty', the self-doubt fuelled 'If I Could') poignantly funny ('The Ballad of Daykitty' is an ode to Lou's many feline friends) and in the case of 'Mary', downright sacrilegious ("Immaculate conception/Yeah right!"). Do check out Lou's incredibly detailed website; www.loobiecore.com, for an astonishing collection of memorabilia, MP3s, drawings, archive photos, writings, cats and more.