Guided by Voices
Mag Earwhig! (Matador)
by Nik Rainey
Indieground infamy is really little more than a scale-model version of the “real” thing, a DIY hype machine replica with lots of tiny moving parts and a tendency to make you dizzy if you breathe the glue in too deeply. The border guards of this tiny, insular republic ran a credibility check when Guided by Voices waded in from the vast reaches of Anonymity around the time of their eighth (or so) album,Bee Thousand (1993), and by the micro-standards these Liliputian lamestains drew up in Indie Rock Year Zero (which fell sometime between the release of R.E.M.’s Chronic Town and the day Robyn Hitchcock turned up on the cover of Creem), they passed with faded colors. For what was GBV but an arena-rock band in miniature – an impatiently prolific band of Midwesterners who ran their anthemic tendencies through the dehydrator and dealt with middle age by cutting back on the middle eights and sticking to a lo-fi diet. GBV singer/chief songwriter/guy who gets first crack at the brewskies Robert Pollard quickly became the preeminent rock star for those too cool for rock stars, knocking off unpolished no-carat gemstones faster than he could mount them, churning out enough swift, hiss-saturated postage-stamp masterworks to put him neck-in-neck with Lou Barlow for the title of King ADD-Rock. Munchkin natterings buzzed like tinnitus through the chat rooms and mimeozines that serve as the town square of this nano-society as the diminutive denizens sprained their skinny wrists snatching up their endless output and grabbing these regular-guy Ohioans in a gnomish group embrace.
The problem is that once these little scuts sink their possessive paws into you, it’s tough to pluck the claws from your skin, a dilemma that, for GBV, reached critical mass last year. First it was Under the Bushes Under the Stars, an album that fairly overflowed with rapid-fire pop invention but reeked of indecision, a self-conscious half-step into the domain of real studios and name producers followed by a sheepish retreat into the four-track comfort zone. Solo albums from Pollard (Not in My Airforce) and Harrison/Entwistle surrogate Tobin Sprout (Carnival Boy) followed, which sent the thin squeals from the anthill into a frightened howl with persistent latteklatch rumors of a split. The hearsay was premature, but controversy redoubled when Pollard announced he had let the rest of the band go and enlisted muscular undergroundlings Cobra Verde to take their place. Would Robert,our Robert, fall prey to the sins of the fleshed-out, writing songs that topped three minutes, weren’t enveloped in waves of machine-hum, and showcased guitar solos?
Well, yes and no. Mag Earwhig!, a “21-song epic rock fairy tale,” hasn’t completely forsaken the new (micro)wave m.o. that made them semi-famous; the thirty-second squiggles are still here, as are not-quite-departed comrades Sprout, Bob’s brother Jim, and Mitch Mitchell (no, not Jimi’s drummer). The difference is that those tunes usually come off as longeurs, quick breathers in between the full-on head-wagglers the Cobras whip out. Pollard shows signs of nervously putting lo-fi to a deserved rest: the first words on the album, sung over a chorus of cheap-ass Casios, are “Can’t hear the revolution,” and another song proclaims “I Am Produced” with a combination of mournfulness and resignation, although it’s probably best not to read too much into them. (In fact, considering Pollard also writes lyrics like “Phenomenal stuntkids in the street/ Popping out of the black ghost pie,” maybe it’s best not to read anything into them.) After the first two, fairly standard GBV numbers, the full-volumed thrust of Verdean John Petkovic’s “I Am A Tree,” replete with unabashed rock hero moves, an indelible refrain, and a running time of nearly five minutes, comes as a refreshing slug in the solar plexus. Pollard himself follows with several exultant numbers (“Bulldog Skin,” “Little Lines”) in a similar vein, ’70s/’90s pastiches that could easily find their way to modern rock radio if programmers would just get over the notion that the Dave Matthews Band belongs there (or anywhere other than the stage of a half-empty sports bar on a Wednesday night). Contrasting old (the vintage GBV of “Jane of the Waking Universe”), new (the tuff-gnarl guitar rock of “The Portable Men’s Society”), and totally surprising (the bitter acoustic ballad “Now to War”) moves with a Whitman’s Sampler of sonic approaches. Mag Earwhig! is a patchwork collage as diverting as any of their album sleeves and perhaps the apex of Guided by Voices’ long and storied career. And if any of you sound-cheap-or-die elitists still has a problem with that, let me know and I’ll tape it onto an old caseless Radio Shack Concertape and fuck up the EQ for you.
