Album Review: Lou Barlow - Apocalypse Fetish

A lo-fi, beauty-in-ugliness ethos has long defined Barlow's musical outlook and as a title, Apocalypse Fetish sounds like his ultimate incarnation - and it may be. Barlow has said he'd be proud if it was his "final record".

For the occasion of this EP Barlow re-strings and re-tunes a ukulele to prove that nothing really is as nice as it seems: Barlow's Franken-instrument is decidedly unlike its original, hopeful whimsy. Barlow's ukulele is dark, brooding and ominous. The sound it produces gives a medieval quality to his already quasi-mythic, stepped-melodies and unsettling half-rhymes.