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Richard Beauregard


Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse   
TVT

As soon as you pick up Do the Collapse you know this is a going to be a different Guided by Voices CD. Gone are the muddy homemade montages, replaced by a well-designed cover of a clean white field with a crushed auto cube, a "Do the Collapse" one-liner. Turning it over you see a much-abbreviated song list of only 16 songs, down from the usual 20-something songs. Also you will notice the absence of the Matador logo -- the band has made the switch to TVT Records. Long-time guitarist/songwriter Tobin Sprout has left the band to pursue a solo career. But the biggest surprise is that Ric Ocasek is listed as producer. You ask yourself "What will the slick produced style of the former Cars frontman do to our lo-fi heroes?"

Right off the bat on "Teenage FBI" you hear the previously nonexistent synthesizers. When the song breaks into the chorus the synthesizers fill with a prototypical Cars sound. "Teenage FBI" is so singable, pure-power pop at its finest, three minutes of infectious fun. It is no surprise that Ric Ocasek was brought in to produce Do the Collapse. It is clear that Robert Pollard is making the move from writing minute-long, lo-fi, Brit-Pop-influenced rockers to fully-honed and polished hits for mass consumption.

Though Pollard is aiming for a mainstream audience, he definitely has not tempered his lyrics. They are still as obscure and enigmatic as ever. "Mushroom Art" finds Pollard contemplating, "In my mushroom art do not observe her beauty / Cloud faced old man winking / You see, he tests me." An enchanting string arrangement enriches the Arthurian "Dragons Awake." Ocasek has expanded the Guided by Voices sound by tightening existing strengths and adding a textural quality with the addition of the strings and synthesizers.

The final song, "An Unmarketed Product," finds Pollard examining the virtue of creation for self-gratification and the fear of rejection. The CD closes with the lines "And if you have any luck / You'll get ahead before you're dead." If Guided by Voices continues on its current path, Pollard will be ahead way before he's dead. I give it a 4 out of 4.