City Beat - Cincinnati
Volume 7, Issue 22 April 19-25 2001
John Stoehr

Guided By Voices
Isolation Drills
TVT Records


Word on the street is that Rock is dead, or at least it's on life-support. Elsewhere people are saying Pop is waiting for old man Rock to croak. So, it looks like the remedy is to get the two genres together: Get Pop to breath some life into Rock, and have Rock give Pop some cred. The band to do it is the hard working men of Middle America, the guys who drink a little too much, smoke a little too much and continue to offer up some of the chewiest Rock-Pop nuggets this side of Dayton, Ohio: Guided By Voices.

Combined, Robert Pollard and his crew have over 100 years of rocking experience. But don't let their collective age stop you from acquiring a taste for GBV. As anyone who has witnessed the evolution of the band can tell you, they're anything but decaying. From after-work hobby band to Indie Pop cult icons, from the ambiguous lyrics and real Lo-Fi 30-second song-bytes on Sunfish Holy Breakfast to the brilliantly crafted radio-ready gems of their new disc, Isolation Drills, Guided by Voices just keep getting better with age.

The reason behind Bob Pollard's success is his emergence as a songwriter. Though he downs a couple cases of Bud every time he goes on stage, there seems to be no brain damage yet, and despite the crushing hangovers, he continues to produce one fine tune after another. (In fact, he attributes his ability to recall the hundreds of songs he's written to the memory-saving power of beer.)

And he gets better with every song. The proof is in the Hard Rock-Pop pudding of Isolation Drills. Able to reach into the smoking ash heap of Cheap Trick, the Who and Genesis, Pollard has pulled out the spirit of Rock and left behind all the bombast and cliché. (OK, so you get a few leg-kicks and some swinging of the microphone a la Roger Daltrey.) But the Rockette gymnastics are just the style, not the substance of his music, the difference between these two concepts being crucial. Pollard as songsmith sets himself apart from the innumerable songwriters throughout Rock's history, many of whom worsened because they relied too heavily on the theatricality of the genre (take Aerosmith and Rod Stewart, for example). Pollard seems to know the difference between the icing and the cake, and that's what makes him perhaps the best songwriter in the country right now.

Listen to "Skills Like This," featuring Folk-Punk singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. It sounds like something ripped off Jimmy Page's guitar strings, though with a decidedly different feel than "Black Dog" or "The Song Remains the Same." Doug Gillard's sparse and rhythmic guitar playing sets the pace as Nat Farley thoughtfully fills in the empty space with invigorating counter-rhythms, making the tune upbeat without feeling rushed. Over Gillard's and Farley's sonic textures trips Pollard, aping the monosyllabic "oooing" of Robert Plant but with none of the center stage one-upmanship. The result is a respectful nod to the great Led Zeppelin but also an acknowledgement of Classic Rock's demise and the need to move on creatively.

Then there is the Pop side of Pollard. The creativity gods must have been smiling the day he took his first sip of Bud, because Pollard, throughout his career, has been able to crank out one happy-catchy-flashy Pop hook after another. There seems to be no end. And Pollard doesn't apologize for it. He seems to see no reason why you can't be Rock and Pop at the same time.

Perhaps that's because they're a little on the quirky side of Pop, which is probably due to their not being Pop purebreds. Take drummer Jim MacPherson's diverse styles in "Fair Touching": First, he's bebopping away on his kit like he's Ringo Star in the yellow submarine, then when the cadence starts looming over the hooky horizon, he's driving with the intensity of Keith Moon "Goin' Mobile."

Though these Pop gems are quirky, they're also complicated, crafted for the mainstream but discriminating listener. Combining the pre-Sergeant Pepper's veneer of the Beatles, the polish of a high-powered studio producer, Robert Schnapf (TVT), the energy of a 15-year-old-boy going to his first mixed high school dance and the love of playing music as long as it's good, Pollard has come up with tightly packaged jewels like "Glad Girls" and "Chasing Heather Crazy" on this new disc. Because of its complexity, Pollard's Pop just gets better every time you listen to it, the fact of which should sufficiently placate heated complaints that the quality of GBV's set list has gone downhill since Bee Thousand.

Overall, you can sense Pollard's genuine love for music making on Isolation Drills. Perhaps that's because he never thought he'd ever get from no-name Scat Records to the high profile Indie label Matador, or eventually make records with increasing budgets at TVT. Perhaps it's because he thought he'd always be a fourth grade teacher reading stories to his students, going home after work to his house and wife and going to his kids' soccer games. Perhaps he thought that he'd be happy as long as he could keep rocking with his drinking buddies, that it would be OK if he never got to be a Rock Star. Whatever the reason behind his love for music, we're lucky he continues to make albums like Isolation Drills.