| Home | Fading Captain Series | GBV News | The Band | The Music | The Critics & Fans | Merchandise | Other Stuff |

The Big Takover - Issue 45
Jack Rabid

Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse   
TVT

Thanks to Chris Wales for transcribing

Robert Pollard was on the bubble. Since losing his
band three years ago, the prolific singer/songwriter
has puttered around, spitting out three of solo LPs
and one flawed if rocking GBV record backed by Cobra
Verde (who he soon fired, showing poor sensitivity).
Did guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell and
drummer Kevin Fennel take the real GBV with them when
they walked the plank, in once case with a regrettable
Pollard push?
Do the Collapse says otherwise. Though the older
lineup will always be the classic one, the newest
incarnation is potent. (The return of early '90s
bassist Greg Demos is key here, though Cobra Verde
holdover Doug Gillard and debuting veteran drummer Jim
MacPherson of Breeders fame are superb, too.) Equally
surprising, the use of a big name producer fails to
quash the band's mojo. In one respect, Ric Ocasek is
the wrong man for the job. For proof, examine the
crunching sound of Bad Religion's Stranger Than
Fiction and No Substance and compare them to the flat
sounding Ocasek-produced LP in-between, The Gray Race.
Do likewise for his 1982 Bad Brains' second LP work.
Sure enough, the guitars here fall short of the bite
of Pollard's typical self-production. Still, the
kindly ex-Cars star elicits super-tight takes,
something GBV has needed for years. And the band still
sounds edgy interpreting Pollard's wild imagination.
Fans were nervous at these changes, but with songs
this hot, it was time to make the tiny jump. Perhaps
the 41-year-old man-child Pollard was woodshedding his
best riffs and tunes for this album, his first for
TVT, while letting the lesser stuff out on his solo
LPs. All 16 songs are winners with zero unfinished
fragments or underdeveloped poor cousins. The style
remains familiar, apart from one schizophrenic pounder
of a hyper-dirge called "Zoo Pie." Three or four
tracks mine the more singalong-'60s Pollard, such as
the sleek, gliding "Surgical Focus," the nicely
perturbed "Things I Will Keep," the jagged "Mushroom
Art," and a new, almost Cars-like, rethinking of the
obscure 1996 single track, "Teenage FBI." All are as
catchy as say, "I am a Scientist" or "Game of Pricks."
Elsewhere, dynamic buildups abound in "Optical
Hopscotch" and the terse chaotic "An Unmarketed
Product," and even an attempt at a portly '70s power
ballad, "Hold on Hope," succeeds thanks to a
honey-kissed verse to die for. If the chaotic "Picture
Me Bigtime" isn't one of the best songs of the year,
with its low note to way-high note chorus jawdropper,
than soaring vocals are way too underappreciated these
days.
For years we'd wondered if the man with the tuneful
knack could submerge his playful sense of mayhem and
love of musical clutter long enough to make an LP more
consistent, and more focused than even the final
Sprout/Mitchell/Fennel outing Under the Bushes, Under
the Stars. Do the Collapse is an event in a weak year,
and once the reported demise of the guitar's is once
again proven premature. Songs matter, and Pollard is
about as dried up as the Niagara Falls.