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Juice Magazine 
Simon Wooldridge

Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse   
TVT

Don't Do The Collapse
Guided By Voices' Bob Pollard only had to go hi-fi to score a radio hit

People say "I can't believe you write so many songs, says Guided By Voices
mainman Bob Pollard. "'I hear you can write 10 songs in a day.' Well I
actually write 50 songs and choose 10."

Prolific, eccentric, drunk. These are traits most commonly associated with
Pollard's work, and that of the Dayton, Ohio band which has evolved around
him for the past ten-plus years. But all these come a distant second to the
characteristic which once best described his work: lo-fi. "I'm good at
destruction, not construction," he says of his production skills. Previous
full studio albums like Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and Mag Earwhig!
have nothing on the sheen of new record Do The Collapse, an album which sees
Pollard and bandmates team up with ex-Cars legend Ric Ocasek on production
duties. "He's one of my influences," says Pollard of Ocasek's oblique
lyrical style. "If you were to list 20, he would be on there".

The new sound includes doubled-up guitars, digital production crunch,
lashings of Ocasek's trademark keyboard cheese and Pollards first bonafide
college radio hit in "Teenage FBI." It's also a pared-back album by GBVs
standards, with only 16 songs making the final cut. Not that Pollard is
slowing down in the songwriting stakes.

"It's a total addiction," he says. "I tried to kill it a long time ago. I
was going to quit. I said 'I'm done. I need to get more responsible and pay
more attention to the important things in life.' And there was no way I
could do it. Every once in a while inspiration comes over me to write poetry
or a song, and I love that. That's the fix."