7. Weed Forestin (1990)

Inchoate sketches of songs, much in the vein of The Freed Man, dominate here. Yet brilliance occasionally shines through, as on the devastating first version of “Brand New Love,” later reprised in epic rock form on Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock. Still other tracks are as puerile as Ween, such as “Three Times a Day,” in which Barlow professes his ambivalence toward masturbation, and the excruciatingly awkward “Sexual Confusion,” which has a title that does it full justice. Sprightly numbers such as “It’s So Hard to Fall in Love” exhibit Barlow’s lyrical gifts, auguring future folk-pop dalliances to come.

As Thurston Moore told me in a 2009 interview for The Big Takeover, “When Lou started playing that sort of music, he singlehandedly created what we called lo-fi.” And for better or worse, it’s in its nascent stages here and on The Freed Man, primed to burst and bloom in myriad directions.