Xpress Magazine - Australia review of Do The Collapse

Xpress Magazine - Australia
By Michael Lock

Guided By Voices
Do The Collapse
TVT

Thanks to Chris Havercroft!

You could never accuse Bob Pollard of ennui in the songwriting department.
Yet after 11 albums as Guided By Voices and numerous solo projects, this is
being hailed as something of a debut - in part to the shift to a major
label, but chiefly down to the crystalline production of former Cars supremo
Ric Ocasek. Instead of twenty five or more four-tracked tunes, Do The
Collapse, the album Pollard always threatened to make, has, sixteen well
resolved pop songs.

All teasingly buried pop hooks of the past have surfaced, scrubbed up and
stretched out into a well paced pure pop album. First single Teenage FBI,
with its Ocasek assisted syth pulsing highlights the first of many tunes
that reverberate to a similar groove and harmony that many of the early
Flying Nun bands did so effectively. The piano drenched Hold On Hope is pure
McCartney with its ascending acoustic chord changes and Harrisonesque
circular solo, and now with two ex-Breeders in the band,(drummer Jim
MacPherson and guitarist Nate Farley) the Dayton-Pixies connection is as
undeniable as ever. Just check the fuzzy rush of Surgical Focus and the
self-referential An Unmarketed Product for similarities. Add lashings of
early R.E.M, a sprig of the Who and a hint of Big Star, combine it all with
Pollard's unique musical perception and the blend is undeniably Guided By
Voices. Killer pop.