Guided By Voices have the keys to the alt-rock kingdom. They are adored by
thousands of critic types (and even some people who don't live in their
mom's basement) for adhering to the Indie Music Purity Act signed in Geneva
in 1986 by Bob Mould, Paul Westerberg, and various members of Killdozer-
provisions of which entail being honest in an impoverished and obscure
manner, showing a strong nondenominational midwestern work ethic, traveling
in a van, being shafted by record labels, and recording albums with a Mr.
Microphone and a Radio Shack boom box in your bass player's rec room. In
the past, the fact that the pride of Ohio, Robert Pollard (and whoever he
could get to play with him), released albums simply as an excuse to come up
with as many goofy song titles as possible only made him more endearing to
cranky fanzine editors and art-garage aficionados the world over. And Guided
By Voices were arty and of the garage- the best of their early stuff sounded
like unreleased demo tapes some acid-rock casualty might have made in Dennis
Wilson's guest house. G.B.V. also spawned a DIY movement of sorts. It was
composed of vinyl junkies of a certain age, who, although enamored with the
rare folkpsychmonster aspect of the '60s, had also learned a thing or two
from postpunkers the Fall and Wire. (I'm thinking of Thinking Fellers Union,
the Grifters, the Strapping Fieldhands, Sebadoh, Pavement.) And even though
English majors need glorified bar bands as much as anyone else, most if not
all these groups have since learned to embrace actual stereophonic recording
studios, leaving room for a new generation of record-store clerks to dazzle
us with the crudity of their art. Robert Pollard, whose music hasn't
sounded like an AM radio at the bottom of a well for years now, has gone
further than any of his partners in production-value crime on Do the
Collapse, his 400th album. Thanks to used Car Ric Ocasek's production job,
this ex-schoolteacher's hobby band has a shiny new coat that would have been
unimaginable five years ago. Ocasek makes rock so clean you can eat off it,
and a lot of this album even has the punch and energy of the Cars' wondrous
debut. (An energy not found on G.B.V.'s last two G.B.V. releases, although
they both had their share of keepers, like for instance "Learning To Hunt"
on Mag Earwig, an uncharacteristically poignant song about fatherhood that
reminds me of "Kooks" on David Bowie's Hunky Dory. At least I think it's
about fatherhood- it might be about hunting.) On Collapse, "Teenage FBI" has
those rinky-dink synths that Cars cover-band the Rentals revived not long
ago, and the sweet guitar leads that waft in from nowhere on "Much Better
Mr. Buckles" rank with powerpop's greatest gifts. Sturdy, dirt-simple riffs
start off 95 percent of the album. (I never liked the Nirvana/grunge
jangly-bumpkin intro approach; you just knew any second they were gonna
stomp on their effects pedal, set for "long hair.") I'm not going to get
into band members here besides our hero Mr. Pollard. You can look up their
tangled family tree on the G.B.V. Web site, and who knows, you might even be
on it! I like the band shots that adorn the new album, though. What with the
guys dressed up in custodial-crew gear, the pictures don't convey the
long-standing indie chic of trucker hats, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and somebody
else's work clothes so much as they resemble promo shots of cleaned-up Ohio
pub-rockers the Rubber City Rebels, circa 1979. And G.B.V.'s on TVT now-
same label that gave long-in-the-tooth Aussie punk Chris Bailey of the
Saints a new lease on life, and the label that made Nine Inch Nail Trent
Reznor so mad he spit out a million-selling record. I guess their former
label, Matador, now a cutting-edge dance imprint, didn't hear enough drum
'n'/or bass in the new G.B.V. sound (but there's plenty of both!). Has this
band sold out its underground cred by creating a slick pop-rock album on a
label founded with sitcom theme-music money? First of all, nobody cares.
Second of all, Robert Pollard is old enough to be your father's older
brother. More important, he lives in Dayton, Ohio. What's he gonna do, buy
the swankiest house in Dayton with all that dough TVT throws around? Put a
moat around his above-ground pool? People from Ohio are incapable of selling
out. Just ask Devo, the Bizarros, Pere Ubu, and the Dead Boys- all
major-label heavyweights in their day. The only way you can do it is if you
move away to England like Chrissie Hynde and dis your smelly shores from
afar. And so what if Do the Collapse has the best Collective Soul song ever
recorded ("Hold on Hope") on it? You'll still never hear it on the radio. In
a perfect world, the cliché goes, kids would flip their lids for whatever
collegiate rock icon is being neglected this week. In the real world,
somebody with a flair for language and a good hook should be able to earn a
happy living without ever leaving home.