sfwek

June 11, 1997

By Curtis Bonney, Martin Johnson

Guided by Voices

Mag Earwhig!

(Matador)

For 15 albums or so, Robert Pollard has been the honcho behind the thirtysomething, Dayton, Ohio, Brit-invasion-style, lo-fi pop ensemble Guided by Voices. After a recent and fairly decent solo effort (in conjunction with/response to former fellow GBV bandmate Tobin Sprout's> also recent and fairly decent solo effort), he's now made like a paramecium and subsumed the band. More significant still, he's taken his batch of 20 songs north to Cleveland and recorded them with a post-punk glam outfit, Cobra Verde (a name so goofy it might be genius), on backup. Hence Mag Earwhig!, which isn't necessarily any tighter than previous offerings, rocks decidedly harder. And no doubt much to the dismay of all those fans who prided themselves in being able to withstand the previous 50-minute batches of shitty production, the lo-fi tag has been replaced with one that should now read "medium-fi." (Egads, user-friendly GBV. A few songs even make it over the four-minute mark.)

No need for worry -- GBV haven't gone AOR. Mag Earwhig! is crammed full of Fab Four/Who stylings, klutzy musicianship, and oddball lyrics. Pollard's knack for catchy melodies continues unabated, as does his knack for dropping the song midhook. Things remain spontaneous, off-kilter, and wobbly. Only now the drums have some punch and shimmer; the guitars fill up the room; the bottom end actually exists. All of this is a good thing. Moreover, I've heard that Mag Earwhig! is supposedly a prog-rock opera -- though, with no readily apparent plot or characters, I'm not sure how one would confirm or deny this rumor. (The elliptical parentheticals on the lyric page, which read like stage directions -- for instance, "Enter the drag queen" -- don't necessarily clear this up.)

Points of interest: "Bulldog Skin," which could be a radio-friendly hit, if Pollard didn't sing so intentionally, charmingly flat at the beginning; "I Am a Tree," written by Doug Gillard of Cobra Verde, with its anthemic '70s guitar and driving punk drums; "Portable Men's Society," a drony gloom-pop vibe with a genuine wankers-only solo; "Jane of the Waking Universe," with an annoyingly catchy chorus; and "The Colossus Crawls West," which sports the lyrics (sung over a disconcerting background rumble) "And when the colossus crawls west/ Jazz bastards will fall and confess/ We all love you so and/ Your rock is paradise plastic/ It's cheap and fantastic!" Paradise plastic indeed. Now if somebody could only tell me why so Many musicians from Ohio (Pollard and crew, Chrissie Hynde, the goobers in Cheap Trick) have so little in common with Mr. Heartland -- John Cougar Mellencamp -- and so much more in common with the invaders from across the pond. Something to do with Ringo, no doubt, and his dashing lo-fi je ne sais quoi. -- Curtis Bonney