Published on Jan 15, 2000
For the entire 13 years of this band’s existence, Guided By
Voices have continued to be the first and foremost in combining the
“lo-fi” sound with ’60s pop influences and lyrics that make
absolutely no real sense. But their albums, though full of good
ideas, have resembled less of a musical statement and more of a
catalog – until now.
Lead vocalist and songwriter Robert Pollard has brought in a
ringer – ex-Cars leader Ric Ocasek – to produce
Do The Collapse and play the occasional keyboard, and he
couldn’t have made a better choice; the results are astounding. Not
only have Guided By Voices made their most accessible album ever,
but they’ve done it without even an ounce of mainstream concession.
Back in his days with the Cars, Ocasek was often struggling with
his bandmates and record label on these exact issues. For the most
part, he lost – although no one can argue with all the great pop
the Cars made, it was a band that often sacrificed its desire to
take a few more risks with its music at the expense of the big
hit.
Do The Collapse is, one would imagine, exactly the sort of
record Ocasek would have wanted to make. In fact, the insistent
guitar wall of sound that opens “Mushroom Art” bears more than a
passing resemblance to the Cars’ “Strap Me In,” but this is still
very a much a Guided By Voices album. The lo-fi vibe remains, but
the band sounds far more proficient.
Pollard’s eerie voice remains, but the occasional sense of “Look
ma, I’ve made a record!” has been replaced by the certainty of
listening to a professional songwriter. The odd titles and obscure
images remain, but they sometimes actually mean something. The
30-second patches of potentially good ideas for three-minute songs
are now three-inute songs themselves. It’s as if the old Guided By
Voices (still very much worth listening to, incidentally) were
struck by lightning and instantly given the power to capitalize on
their dreams.
So what are the clever pop concoctions that Pollard has finally
made? For starters, there’s the paranoid angst of “Teenage FBI” –
“Someone tell me why / I do the things that I don’t wanna do?” Then
there’s the grunge-ish “Liquid Indian,” and “Optical Hopscotch,”
both holding their own with most soft-verse, loud-chorus anthems
this decade has become famous for. There’s the mockingly cheesy
torch ballad “Hold On Hope,” equally inspirational and ridiculous.
There’s the infatuation imagery of “Wrecking Now,” which in an
alternative world would be playing in the background during a
‘meaningful’ teen drama show. Best of all is “Surgical Focus,” a
psychedelic rocker with a wild, unpredictable but impeccably
crafted melody that’s as near perfect as most mere pop songs get –
it begins “With surgical focus / she stared at me and said / I’m
willing to reach out / get into your head” and end with “Climbing
high upon the rocky cliffs / we fly with surgical focus.” The album
ends with the somewhat biographical “An Unmarketed Product,” and
the warning “Well, I can give you credit… and if you have
any luck, you’ll get ahead before you’re dead.” How can you not
love this irony?
What else can be emphasized save for a reassurance that Guided
By Voices has not “sold out” in any sense. Rather, they have, as
the album title suggests, done the collapse into a thinking
person’s pop band; intelligent, incisive, and focused. Surgically
focused.