Bright eyes

The last time I talked with Anton Barbeau, he took issue with my characterization of his eyes. I said they were small. He e-mailed later, saying I was dead wrong, that his eyes weren’t small at all, and, in fact, they’re large. A girl once marveled at the size of them, he said.

So, this time around, when he walked through the door of the coffee shop, I made sure to look directly into them, and he was right: His eyes were huge—the biggest things I’d ever seen. Barbeau looked like an extraterrestrial being, or a man carrying a couple of plates on his face. Actually, he looked the same as the last time I saw him: wild-haired and frantic, like a good Brit. And his eyes were regular-sized, I guess.

Well, now, thankfully, the American ex-pat is too busy to squabble about his looks. He’s been back in the States for a few weeks, catching up with friends and family, playing shows, doing press, recording and pushing Allyson Seconds’ Bag of Kittens record, which he helped write and produce. Barbeau has also spent a little bit of time (actually, a surprisingly very little bit) pushing his own record.

The album, Plastic Guitar, is hard to pinpoint, probably because it represents a smattering of songs, rather than a carefully planned collection of music—“a good cross-section of the things I do,” Barbeau said. The album certainly has a lot going on. There’s some ’60s hippie folk in “Dear Miss”; there’s a flat-out rocker in “Plastic Guitar”; and, like any other Barbeau album, there are a couple pieces of jaw-dropping beauty. “Boat Called Home” (which also appears on Seconds’ Bag of Kittens album, except with Allyson singing and in a faster, poppier tempo) is simple, reserved, powerful and classic Barbeau.

But as I write this, I can’t quite separate Barbeau’s jittery, often comical, persona from his music. I’ve spent years listening to his songs and, like my own family members, I have stared at them for so long that I can’t quite see what I’m looking at anymore. So to get an accurate, unbiased look into his album, I did what any music critic on deadline would do: I asked a group of high-school girls sitting next to me in the coffee shop whether they’d like to weigh in. Obviously, they did, so I passed around the headphones, like a joint at a school dance.

Kristen, a 15-year-old student at St. Francis High School loved “Boat Called Home.” She said it was totally something she would listen to and “the lyrics were really good.” She found Barbeau’s voice charming, where some (like my fiancée) tell me it’s kitschy. However, Kristen’s friend Shauna, also 15, was quite taken by Barbeau’s singing. “It’s really interesting—not your typical, mainstream voice,” she concluded.

So, apparently, he’s a hit with teenagers. But it turns out that high-school girls aren’t Barbeau’s only new demographic.

“Do you know about that automatic door clip?” Barbeau asked. I didn’t, but he explained that his song “Automatic Door” was used as the soundtrack for a YouTube clip of a Pakistani engineering student who doesn’t quite understand the concept of a glass automatic door. “I don’t want to give it away,” he said (just before he gave it away). “But at the end of the video he just smashes his head through the door.” The clip (which you can view at www.josh-fernandez.com/2009/12/automatic-door) so far has garnered almost 3 million views and has generated a new interest in Barbeau’s music among the “people who watch stupid shit on YouTube” demographic.

Barbeau’s career continues to be impressive (and kind of awkward), yet I still believe that Plastic Guitar deserves more than its creator is giving it. “Not to talk down about my record, but I don’t know whether it’s my 12th or 13th—nobody knows anymore,” Barbeau says. “As an album, it really holds together well—and I think it’s a good introduction for people who haven’t heard my stuff, or if you like my stuff already—but it’s not like Sgt. Pepper’s, Volume II.”