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Philadelphia Weekly
Hobart Rowland

Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse   
TVT

Thanks to Youngster for transcribing

So Guided By Voices' Robert Pollard has finally uncorked that massive, slick 
rock epic he'd been threatening to blindside us with one of these days. *Do 
The Collapse* (TVT), the spawn of a sonically eventful studio tryst with 
King "Candy-O" Ric Ocasek, boasts a rather sardonic title, considering the 
album promises anything *but* collapse as it ventures farther into the cushy 
clutches of professional recording than most GBV fans have ever imagined. 
And Pollard has only punctuated the stingingly sweet blow by co-headlining 
this tour with yet another '70s pop / new wave institution, Cheap Trick.

But then, Pollard - for all his boozy, mad-professor frumpiness - has always 
likened himself to rock 'n' roll royalty - almost from the GBV's inception 
in Dayton, Ohio, well over a decade ago. And while he has been name-dropping 
the Who of late, he's really more Peter than Pete - Gabriel rather than 
Townshend, that is. Granted, *Collapse* has its share of bigger-than-life 
moments, all worthy of the occasional Daltreyesque lasso-mic maneuver. 
Between the earnest (if maddeningly esoteric) power ballads like "Wrecking 
Now" and "Hold on Hope," and the acutely academic tomfoolery of "In 
Stitches," "Strumpet Eye," "Optical Hopscotch" and "Dragons Awake!" Pollard 
swings the arena-icon pendulum farther toward a certain wildly festooned art 
rocker circa 1978 - especially when paired with that erudite, pseudo-British 
accent of his.

And when Pollard reels off such troubling rhetorical quandaries as "How do 
these things come into our lives so intrusively / How do they change their 
pieces accordingly?" it's all too easy to picture him singing his highbrow 
heart out for, say, Amnesty International. A few fluke dance hits later, and 
there may even be a castle estate in the English countryside (equipped with 
a well-stocked cooler full of Bud, naturally) in his future.

None of that, however, is worth making confetti out of 10 years' worth of 
homemade classics from the proverbial (and literal) GBV basement. Hell, I'd 
suspect even those who lost interest as far back as 1996's *Under the Bushes 
Under the Stars* will make an appearance for what's nothing less than GBV's 
commercial coming-out party - if only to monitor Pollard's Herculean beer 
intake, get a load of his latest moves and absorb what may or may not be a 
copious dose of that old lo-fi feeling. Me, I'll be eye-balling the big 
time, right along with Pollard.