Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse   
TVT

In the early 90's, rock sought refuge from the SoCal music biz in a
variety of low-profile locations: One was a basement rec room in Dayton,
Ohio, filled with drinking buddies; another, a lonely bedroom in
Northampton, MA.  As a genre, indie rock tried to localize and
personalize pop, to reinvent its audience in spaces that felt private
and real.  So it's ironic, but perhaps inevitable, that new albums by
indie flagbearers Guided By Voices(conceived in that Dayton rec
room)and  Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion(conceived, like his day job
Sebadoh, in that Northampton bedroom) now return to the primal scene of
glossy studio product El Lay.  Whether they intend to give up the fight
or cut a deal remains to be seen.

Guided By Voices perfectly embodied the indie ideal around 1994: A
bunch of aging former jocks in the middle of nowhere conjure up a
fantasy rock world as entertainingly phony as -Live At Budokan.  You
could hear phantom fans chanting "G-B-V! G-B-V!" at the beginning of
Guided By Voices' 1992 album, Propeller, as frontman Robert Pollard
enacted his dream of Roger Daltrey-style arena-rock stardom. 

But the longer Pollard played with his rock-n-roll fantasy, the
more he wanted the real thing.  The band splintered; Pollard replaced
longtime collaborators Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell with members of
Cleveland's hard-rocking Cobra Verde for Mag Earwhig!(1997).  That
didn't last.  Now, in a bid for pop-radio airplay, he has signed on with
a new label-TVT- and enlisted a new rhythm section along with producer
(and ex-Cars driver) Ric Ocasek.  Pollard hasn't really changed his
music that much.  It's just that now, when he titles a song "Picture Me
Big Time," he seems to want to be taken seriously.  The tape hiss and
cut-and-paste production are gone, leaving tarted-up songs that remain
catchy as ever.

Do The Collapse resembles most of the ten other GBV albums, with a
handful of power pop tunes that shoulda been hits in 1967 but probably
won't do much in 1999.  Tracks like "Teenage FBI" may trade the old,
scratchy guitar strum for pulsing synth effects, but no New Wave
Svengali can smooth Pollard's Camels-damaged voice or, in the end, bring
to earth his indie fantasy of a mass audience of teenage pop-music
archivists.

Back in the early-to-mid-90s, when Guided By Voices was the best band on the planet, cranking out more songs filled with wit, passion, and hooks from their bedroom than there were failed electronica bands signed to major labels. The music press, eager for a new buzzword to claim, labeled what they were doing "lo-fi." Due to their middle aged status, their mundane day jobs (schoolteacher, etc.), their allegiance to the simpler things (Budweiser, records by the Who), and their commitment to stadium rock excess despite their four-track, home-recording limitations, they were pigeonholed by many as "cute" or "charming;" the big sound coming from such little means was misunderstood as "schtick"

The big sound coming from such little means was misunderstood as "schtick." But what most people failed to realize was that precisely what made GBV so great was their refusal to be constrained by their cheap-recordings. These weren't a bunch of Huggybear T-shirt wearing wibbling indie-boys, mewling stories of first-grade tree houses and second-grade crushes into Fisher-Price microphones. These were grown men, men with a lifetime of ambition and drink behind them and one chance to scream an epic into a microphone before them. So while many of GBV's lo-fi associates have returned to the obscurity from which they crawled, Robert Pollard and his ever changing band of Dayton Ohio natives have kept plugging away.

But eventually, the problem that arose was one of quality over quantity. Pollard has again and again proven himself to be the most prolific 40-year-old songwriter of all time, tossing out hundreds of half-formed melodies and meandering, verbose lyrics in the time it takes Trent Reznor to crack his knuckles. And so, as the songs kept coming and success arrived (at least enough for Pollard to quit his job at the school and devote himself more fully to the rock'n'roll life of his dreams) there was no longer any need to belt any tune that popped into his head into a Tascam and release it, unedited. With the mid-90s masterworks, Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes--two albums packed equally full of gorgeous melodies, dramatic range, and whacked-out experiments--came the end of Pollard's bedroom period. The bar had been raised too triumphantly to stay lo-fi, but how to translate the GBV sound to the big leagues?

Attempt number one was to carry it over on swagger and attitude, resulting in 1997's creaky, under whelming Mag Earwhig. Realizing cock-rock might have been a mistake, that it was the hooks that made them bigger than they were, not the act that went along with it, Pollard fired the most recent band he had hired (Cobra Verde). He then hooked up with some ex-Breeders, ex-Amps, and ex-members of his own band, put ex-Cars-frontman Ric Ocasek in front of the boards and tried, for real this time, to put his pop-rock mastery into sound. The result is GBV's rather impressive TVT records debut, Do The Collapse.

The album starts with "Teenage FBI," a rousing track chock-full of enormous Cars-esque keyboard sweeps and other 24-track splendor. The impact is breathtaking--it is the GBV song the old-time fan used to hear in his head: the throbbing head-nodding rush one always knew they were capable of. The effect is outstanding. Nearly as good are two other early album standouts, "Things I Will Keep," and "Hold On Hope." Modeled on the best of Pollard's mid-tempo heart-tuggers, the songs ebb and flow beautifully while Pollard jabbers on about Earth Mothers and whatnot, while the minor chords and even (on the latter) strings swell to spine-tingly climaxes. Great, great stuff.

Elsewhere, "Liquid Indian" may have the best weak-verse to outstanding chorus ratio ever recorded. "Dragons Awake" and "Wrecking Now" have gentle, lulling melodies reminiscent of the better GBV b-sides of the Alien Lanes period. Best of all is "Surgical Focus," which if it isn't the best song the band have ever recorded, just might be the most realized. . A guitar pop-gem, with a driving verse building to a elegantly simple, multi-tracked chorus, if it isn't a hit (which it probably won't be) it's the world's fault, not the band's.

Overall? Pollard proved he could do it. The band sounds tighter and more propulsive than past incarnations, and, by returning to a more classic Bee Thousand-era pop sound, he almost makes up for the absence of his janglier, former songwriting partner/foil, Tobin Sprout. As is the case with many recent Pollard projects, however, Do The Collapse is marred slightly by a lack of focus. The highs are outstandingly high, but the lows ("In Stiches," "Optical Hopscotch") are frustratingly middling. Interesting, but we've heard it before. But what's most important is that they found a way to do it at all, on their own terms. Some might call it "crossing over," or even "selling out." This is silly, because Guided By Voices, in Bob Pollard's head at least, have always been an arena-ready rock band. What is most impressive is that he has managed to free up his sound while still maintaining its quality. Some great songs and an encouraging return to form. May Pollard continue rocking until he's 70.