Orlando Sentinel

By Parry Gettleman

Mag Earwhig!

(Matador)

Copyright 1997 Sentinel Communications Co.

Rumors of Guided by Voices' break-up proved to be greatly exaggerated. The group did undergo recent lineup changes - but then, in the course of a 10-album career, GBV has undergone 51 lineup changes. (The new press kit includes a family tree that makes Fleetwood Mac's look a mere twig by comparison.)

The one immutable element in GBV is singer-songwriter-guitarist Bob Pollard, the coolest former elementary school teacher in Dayton, Ohio. His Principal cohorts here are the four members of Cleveland neo-glam group Cobra Verde, but there are plenty of guests, including erstwhile GBVers Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell and Jim Pollard (brother of Bob).

The new lineup is a good one, but the most notable thing about Mag Earwhig is the quality of the songs. Pollard always had a knack for hooks but wasn't much on structure. Rather than trying to develop his melodies, he tended to casually toss them out in the form of myriad short tunes. Sometimes Pollard was delightfully pithy. Sometimes he was as frustrating as an A student handing in C-plus work scribbled during homeroom the day it was due.

Pollard still prefers to turn in a sheaf of short assignments rather than substantive term papers. Mag Earwhig's title track, for instance, is only 37 seconds long. But even the most abbreviated tunes seem tantalizing, rather than incomplete. And although all 21 are recorded in similar lo-fi splendor, they offer sufficient variety.

Pollard sounds like a Beatle gone back to Hamburg to front a kraut-rock band on "Sad If I Lost It," in which woozy, clangorous guitars and keyboards don't disguise a soaring chorus. "Bulldog Skin" is a pop gem with grinding, gnashing guitars, one good harmony singer and a small chorus of backing vocalists who seem to have learned their funny "woo-hoos" off the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil."

The dreamy "Are You Faster" is a bit reminiscent of Robyn Hitchcock. On the four-minute "Portable Men's Society," guitars churn ominously and a keyboard keens. (Coming from Pollard, a track this long is practically "Court of the Crimson King.") Pollard's lyrics are still rather obscure and even downright Goofy. In the Cheap Trick-y "I Am a Tree," he sings, "I show my age when I don't cry/ I have the leaves that will fall off when wind blows by." But Pollard's pop instincts are so sure, it's easy to forgive him such poetical lapses.