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Barely Real is a 1992 extended play by the American indie rock band Codeine. After releasing their previous album Frigid Stars LP in 1990, the group accepted an invitation from the quartet Bastro to Concert tour in Europe in 1991. Following the tour, the group was invited to record a single for Sub Pop Singles Club and attempted to record their follow-up album The White Birch in 1992. The recording sessions proved to be disastrous for the group since they found themselves often with unusable tracks over several different studios. As Codeine could not record enough material for a full-length album, they decided to release what tracks they had as an EP.
The music on Barely Real continued the slowcore music style of their previous album. Barely Real also featured contributions from guest musicians such as Jon Fine of Bitch Magnet playing additional guitar on the song "Jr" and a piano Cover version of the song "Wird" performed by David Grubbs. Following the recording sessions, the group's drummer Chris Brokaw left the group being replaced by Doug Scharin.
Barely Real had one single ("Realize") released and was initially released in Germany through Sub Pop, followed by a release in the United States in 1993. The band toured North America to promote the release which included an opening spot for Mazzy Star and their first Concert in Canada. The album received praise from the Alternative Press and Melody Maker on its initial release, with the latter calling the work "25 minutes of snowblind glory". The EP was by The Numero Group in 2012, including various unreleased songs and new material. The reissue was acclaimed Spin and Pitchfork Media, with the latter describing the release as "masterful".
Codeine decided to continue their recording sessions in July at the studio in Boston where "Barely Real" and their third recording of "Jr" were completed. The band then continued to Night Owl studio to record "Hard To Find" with a drum machine. Jon Fine of the band Bitch Magnet added guitar to "Jr" while Mike McMackin began to EQ the tracks from Toxic Shock, Night Owl, and the Boston studio. Immerwahr also contributed to the mixing of the album without McMackin, stating that they were not getting along after their extended periods of time spent recording. The band quickly noticed that the amount of material they had recorded would not be enough for the length of an LP which lead the group to releasing what they had as an Extended play. To balance out the EP's sides, the band revisited the instrumental song "Wird" that was made as a tribute to the band Slint. Immerwahr described "Wird" as a song he regretted making, as it was an attempt to do a version of a song from Slint's album Tweez. He sent a tape of the track to David Grubbs to do a piano version of the song that was re-titled "W.". John McEntire recorded the song in a music room at the University of Chicago where he was working on an undergraduate degree.
After completing the album, Brokaw left Codeine to focus on his band Come. The group shot the video for "Realize" without him. Engle took longer than he expected to replace Brokaw as after placing a classified ad, he ended up "flooded with calls" and that "Half of them hadn't heard Codeine. I'd say, well, we play a very particular style that you should really know about." The group chose Doug Scharin, who had attended Codeine's first show in Boston.
The Toronto Star described the Codeine's music as slowcore, a style AllMusic stated was famous for having a slow pace and skeletal music with "melodies linger forever and rhythms lurch forward, all shrouded in thick, dank atmospherics." Stewart Mason of AllMusic described the music of Barely Real as a continuation of the style made on their previous album", while comparing a review of the compilation album When I See The Sun in Exclaim! proposed that the group's music "didn't change much during their five years together ― all the songs are relentlessly slow and possess an emotional detachment verging on apathy." When asked about the music's pace, on Barely Real, Immerwahr said the music was in contrast to grunge music of the era, and that slowing it down made it "challenging for people and challenging for audiences. And I actually kind of like that." In a contemporary review, Ned Raggett of AllMusic stated this style is exemplified on songs like "Realize", which continued the hybrid of a deliberate pace with electric guitar playing with softly sung vocals. Some tracks contained a variation on Codeine's music, such as "Promise of Love", which Raggett characterized as having a "late-night jazz club style" that only contains more traditional Codeine styled music towards the end. Other songs that veried the sound included the piano-based track "W." performed by David Grubbs and quick stuttering guitar riff on "Jr". Immerwahr spoke about the tracks "W." and "Promise of Love", opining that "W." created a "nice transition from the severity of 'Hard to Find' to the jazzy 'Promise of Love'"
The album received a released in the United States through Sub Pop on July 1, 1993. In 1993, Codeine opened for Mazzy Star on selected dates in the Midwest and toured through North America. This tour had Codeine perform their first shows in Canada. Stephen Immerwahr spoke about the audiences to the Toronto Star, noting that they were people "who sit and really listen to stuff...Not people drinking themselves into oblivion." Reviewing one of their 1993 shows, Mark Jenkins of The Washington Post stating that Codeine "pursues the intoxicating dislocation offered by slow-mo cinematography" and that the drumming of Doug Scharin "rattled rib cages throughout the club". The review concluded that despite the self-imposed limitations that Codeine's music had, the result was a "curiously effective marriage of meditation and aggression."
The Numero Group re-released Barely Real with nine bonus tracks on both compact disc and vinyl in 2012. This release added unreleased songs, Peel sessions, demo tracks, and the songs "Cracked in Two", "Broken-Hearted Wine", and a live cover of Unrest's "Hydroplane". On the reissue, Brokaw commented that "we were all happy with the ''Barely. Some of the Dessau sessions are being included in the reissues on Numero, which I'm very glad about. The best way I can describe it is that we had high aspirations around what we wanted to achieve and it wasn't always easy (or even possible) to make those happen."
From retrospective reviews, The Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music commented that Barely Real was "on first hearing, slightly soporific and listless, but it rewards repeated listening with its depth and emotional texture." Ned Raggett (AllMusic) gave the album a rating of four and a half stars out of five, explaining that "Those put off by earlier Codeine CDs won't want to continue; those taken by the band's way of doing things will happily embrace it." The Numero Group's reissue received positive reviews from Spin and Pitchfork Media, with Pitchfork declaring that after The Frigid Stars LP, the EP "felt masterful in its compression of what we'd come to expect from them."
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