1. Bubble & Scrape (1993)

There was an article in the long-defunct British music magazine Select in the mid-’90s on “The Best Albums For Having a Nervous Breakdown While Listening.” A Joy Division record obviously made the cut, as did R.E.M.’s Fables Of The Reconstruction, Nirvana’s In Utero, Radiohead’s The Bends, and a few others. Aside from the fact that these were perhaps my personal favorite albums at the time, it also jumped out at me that Bubble & Scrape was lamentably absent from the list. No Sebadoh record past or present has conveyed unbearable emotional tumult as scathingly as Bubble & Scrape.

Barlow achieves an arresting pinnacle on the cataclysmic devastation of “Soul And Fire,” as he confesses, with surprisingly dignified resignation, “I know our love is coming to an end.” This opening number rapidly segues into “2 Years, 2 Days,” in which he questions the lover he’d signed off on emotionally and how she might feel in a couple years or couple days if he convinced her to come back, “Holding on but trapping you inside,” over lacerating slashes of electric guitar. Gaffney’s songs such as “Telecosmic Alchemy” and “Fantastic Disaster” provide a certain degree of levity, but it isn’t needed. And Lowenstein’s tunes, while hewing closer to Barlow’s in mood, still pale in comparison.

This record flat-out belongs to Barlow, from the torque-driven “Sacred Attention” to the unsurpassably sad “Think (Let Tomorrow Bee),” featuring one of Barlow’s finest lyrics; “Pushing every answer, when there isn’t any question.” Surely Barlow realized by then that the only questions worth asking were the ones without answers.