In 2007, Lou Barlow, Jason Lowenstein, and Eric Gaffney—the incarnation of Sebadoh responsible for classics like Sebadoh III and Bubble and Scrape—reunited for a tour. Shortly after it was over, Gaffney was in a bike accident in which he broke multiple bones and, in his words, "nearly died... I was in a sling with a head full of morphine, codeine, and muscle relaxers."
Gaffney has spent the years since making tons of interesting music away from the Sebadoh spotlight. Much of it can be heard and bought via three Bandcamp sites that Gaffney runs, all of which teem with sounds made in many different locales and time periods. It can be tough to sort out exactly what’s from where and when, but it doesn’t really matter—just dive in anywhere and you’ll find something worth listening to.
You might want to start with Gaffney’s current solo project, which he has humbly dubbed Jesus Christ. The JC Bandcamp page currently has 16 releases that span over 30 years, from his earliest recordings as a teenager covering Devo and the Ramones, to compelling mid-aughts material he made on a four-track while living in San Francisco (try the varied Uncharted Waters from that period), to music he’s made more recently after moving back to Massachusetts.
Everything from the latter category is pretty excellent: There’s the growling America’s Drug, the energetic Christ, the Lord, and the mellower Stop Eating Animals! (which he’s billed as his newest record, though confusingly enough it comprises material from his SF stint). Strewn throughout are some semi-protest songs, like a punky anthem imploring people to "Go Vegan" and a teetotaller screed called "I Hate Alcohol". But it’s all done with humor and playfulness—perhaps only Gaffney could make a song about dying from "Cancer of the Face!" sound fun.
Gaffney’s other two bandcamp sites are more curio-oriented, but there’s still tons of intriguing sounds on both. The Fields of Gaffney site primarily documents his early-00s band of that name, who played a fleshed-out version of his homemade pop. In typical non-linear fashion, the site also includes solo material, like the classic-rock-cover-filled The World Turned Upside Down and the epic Face of Man, a 35-track monster that includes embryonic versions of Sebaoh tunes like "Violet Execution" and "Mean Distance". The Eric Sebadoh site is full of even more history, offering early unreleased Sebadoh, music from Gaffney’s 80s band Grey Matter, and the experimental sounds of the Gracefully Aging Hippy Soloists, his duo with the late Charles Ondras of Unsane. The latter is so unique it’s odd that it hadn’t seen the light of day before now.
The same goes for Gaffney’s ongoing Jesus Christ work, and he’s not shy about that. He's mentioned in interviews that he’s long sought someone to release his music, and on the bandcamp page for Face of Man he bluntly ask listeners to "LET A RECORD LABEL KNOW I'M INTERESTED IN GETTING MY MUSIC OUT PROPERLY ON VINYL AND CD AND CASSETTE…" A cynic might see that as desperate, but to me it’s refreshingly honest. And it’s justified: Gaffney has made fascinating music for decades, and it deserves to be heard by as many ears as possible.