For the entire 13 years of this band’s existence, Guided By
\nVoices have continued to be the first and foremost in combining the
\n“lo-fi” sound with ’60s pop influences and lyrics that make
\nabsolutely no real sense. But their albums, though full of good
\nideas, have resembled less of a musical statement and more of a
\ncatalog – until now.<\/p>\n
Lead vocalist and songwriter Robert Pollard has brought in a
\nringer – ex-Cars leader Ric Ocasek – to produce
\nDo The Collapse<\/i> and play the occasional keyboard, and he
\ncouldn’t have made a better choice; the results are astounding. Not
\nonly have Guided By Voices made their most accessible album ever,
\nbut they’ve done it without even an ounce of mainstream concession.
\nBack in his days with the Cars, Ocasek was often struggling with
\nhis bandmates and record label on these exact issues. For the most
\npart, he lost – although no one can argue with all the great pop
\nthe Cars made, it was a band that often sacrificed its desire to
\ntake a few more risks with its music at the expense of the big
\nhit.<\/p>\n
\nDo The Collapse<\/i> is, one would imagine, exactly the sort of
\nrecord Ocasek would have wanted to make. In fact, the insistent
\nguitar wall of sound that opens “Mushroom Art” bears more than a
\npassing resemblance to the Cars’ “Strap Me In,” but this is still
\nvery a much a Guided By Voices album. The lo-fi vibe remains, but
\nthe band sounds far more proficient.<\/p>\n
Pollard’s eerie voice remains, but the occasional sense of “Look
\nma, I’ve made a record!” has been replaced by the certainty of
\nlistening to a professional songwriter. The odd titles and obscure
\nimages remain, but they sometimes actually mean something. The
\n30-second patches of potentially good ideas for three-minute songs
\nare now three-inute songs themselves. It’s as if the old Guided By
\nVoices (still very much worth listening to, incidentally) were
\nstruck by lightning and instantly given the power to capitalize on
\ntheir dreams.<\/p>\n
So what are the clever pop concoctions that Pollard has finally
\nmade? For starters, there’s the paranoid angst of “Teenage FBI” –
\n“Someone tell me why \/ I do the things that I don’t wanna do?” Then
\nthere’s the grunge-ish “Liquid Indian,” and “Optical Hopscotch,”
\nboth holding their own with most soft-verse, loud-chorus anthems
\nthis decade has become famous for. There’s the mockingly cheesy
\ntorch ballad “Hold On Hope,” equally inspirational and ridiculous.
\nThere’s the infatuation imagery of “Wrecking Now,” which in an
\nalternative world would be playing in the background during a
\n‘meaningful’ teen drama show. Best of all is “Surgical Focus,” a
\npsychedelic rocker with a wild, unpredictable but impeccably
\ncrafted melody that’s as near perfect as most mere pop songs get –
\nit begins “With surgical focus \/ she stared at me and said \/ I’m
\nwilling to reach out \/ get into your head” and end with “Climbing
\nhigh upon the rocky cliffs \/ we fly with surgical focus.” The album
\nends with the somewhat biographical “An Unmarketed Product,” and
\nthe warning “Well, I can give you credit\u2026 and if you have
\nany luck, you’ll get ahead before you’re dead.” How can you not
\nlove this irony?<\/p>\n
What else can be emphasized save for a reassurance that Guided
\nBy Voices has not “sold out” in any sense. Rather, they have, as
\nthe album title suggests, done the collapse into a thinking
\nperson’s pop band; intelligent, incisive, and focused. Surgically
\nfocused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":25254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6240],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36459","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-guided-by-voices","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36459"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36459"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}