We've all been dumped before or have experienced unrequited love. Somehow, somewhere, somebody done you wrong. Whether it ended with a restraining order or a "Let's just be friends" chat, we're all familiar with the icy sting of heartache and Sebadoh provide the perfect soundtrack to both heal, and salt and pepper those achy breaky open wounds.

Consequently, their concert at the Bowery Ballroom last Friday, March 12, 1999, was more like a support group and the crowd was packed with more lonely, 20-somethings than there are Hasidic Jews in the diamond district.

On-stage, co-frontmen Lou Barlow and Jason Loewenstein fleshed out the yin and yang relationship that seems so one-sided on record. For once, it seemed less like a collaboration between two solo artists and more like a real band. They switched between guitar and bass depending on whose song it was and their vastly different styles of playing cut right to the fore.

Loewenstein's songs channeled his inner stalker, and he vented years of anguish and frustration over past romantic rejections by attacking his guitar with ragged power chords and his throat with guttural screams. Bitterness is his bread and self-loathing is his butter, but the songs still have an undeniable sense of hope and pride that ultimately wins out over the rancor.

Barlow's approach is more soul searching. His lyrics concentrate on examining his own personal flaws and blaming himself for whatever's going wrong in his life. He is compulsively obsessive about every single detail of his existence, most often singling out his relationship with his girlfriend for microscopic analysis. The dissection of his myriad insecurities in minutiae is as engrossing as it is spooky and more than any other musician today (especially your attention-hungry basket-cases like Marilyn Manson and Courtney Love) Barlow fuels his inner turmoil through music as a kind of therapy. His songs and guitar are his psychiatrist, exercising his self-doubting demons by laying them out for the world to see and forcing himself to deal with them.

The trade off between these two dichotomies every couple of songs created a kind of manic-depressive Dueling Banjos effect. Although, going from the serial-killer riffage of Loewenstein's "S. Soup," headlong into Barlow's touchingly somber "Skull," really made me see the beauty of the group's symbiotic split personality.

Maybe it was the marijuana talking, but standing near the stage under the balcony's rafters, I got to thinking this must be how it felt being in the audience of Shakespeare's Globe theater. I know it sounds coy to compare the two in light of the recent Shakespeare in Love (not a bad flick, by the by), but I think the comparison is a good one. The Bowery Ballroom and the Globe theater share being a place where the uncouth and drunken masses (of which I consider myself a part) gather together to forget their problems for a couple of hours and watch life's tragedies and comedies played out before them. Love's triumphs and losses. Man's inhumanity to man. Jealousy, hubris and self-pity. Sebadoh's show had all the major components of a Shakespearean epic except it was served up by guys in jeans and T-shirts instead of tights and frilly smocks.

For their encore Sebadoh unleashed "The Freed Pig," a song off one of their earliest albums that relays the bitter infighting and rivalry Lou had with former Dinosaur Jr. bandmate, J. Mascis. The song is a seething cauldron of bitterness and irony, and for good reason. Barlow was kicked out of the group by Mascis who (lacking the courage to actually fire him) lied and told him that Dinosaur Jr. had disbanded, but then continued touring and recording without him. Even for musicians, this was a low-down dirty trick that I can only liken to being dumped on Valentine's Day and then finding out your ex-mate is going out with your best friend. Whatever the case, the song rocked, as did closers "Crystal Gypsy" and "Sorry" off of their new album, The Sebadoh.

Instead of moping around the house this weekend, thinking about your ex, and finding yourself with your pants around your ankles masturbating to a mental picture of the person, why not just listen to Sebadoh. Their songs are like an understanding friend offering you a beer, a smoke and a shoulder to cry on. They'll smile, nod politely and listen to your sad, sad tale, cause they've all been there before.

Sebadoh. Feel their pain, hear their music and nurse your love hangover.

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