Guided by Voices
Earthquake Glue
Matador

By now its story has become the stuff of legend or, at the very least, a fractured fairy tale. Churning out quirky, lo-fi masterpieces starting in the mid-'80s, Dayton, Ohio's Guided by Voices and its idiosyncratic ringleader Robert Pollard slowly built a small but loyal following. In 1995, Alien Lanes, the band's first album for Matador, suddenly propelled its members to the status of crown princes of indie rock, complete with a sponsorship by Converse (the band would receive free high-tops if its members wore them onstage).

Seven years later, GBV is no longer the indie darling it once was; its members are now elder statesmen, happy to have ducked the spotlight and content to produce songs at a rate few bands can match.

With the release of its 14th album, Earthquake Glue, GBV continues on a course it's been charting since 1997's Mag Earwhig!: the evolution from the encapsulating safety of the early lo-fi recordings to a more expansive, fully formed sound. Not that the random emergence of four-track tape hiss and vocals that sometimes sounded as if they were being filtered through molasses didn't have their own moments of pure beauty. But it is the desire to change, to continually evolve within a specific corner of the music universe that has guided Pollard and his band mates from basements to stadiums (or at least large clubs).

The opening track, "My Kind of Soldier," and the watery, effects-laden "I'll Replace You with Machines" chug along beautifully, powered by swirling, atmospheric guitars. The Creation-meets-Blue Öyster Cult romp "Beat Your Wings" is tinged with psychedelia and littered with abrupt stop-start verses. "The Main Street Wizards" makes a blissful detour into full-blown pop-rock, fueled by towering keyboard bursts. Spacey, new-wave keyboards and flourishes of a '60s-style organ wash over the stilted guitar progressions of "Mix Up the Satellite" and in the next galaxy, "Secret Star" soars, a glorious combination of the Who, and the pomposity of latter-day prog-rock. Pollard has often invoked Roger Daltrey; he does so here without apology. It's a shining example of GBV at its best: strange shifts in tempo, fractured melodies and a willingness to shove several songs into one.

While Pollard's throaty Anglophile vocals and surrealist lyrics have framed every GBV song since the beginning, on this particular outing, the band (Doug Gillard and Nate Farley on guitar, Tim Tobias on bass and Kevin March on drums) functions as a unit, informing the songs with a structure and a fully realized design that has sometimes been lacking in past albums. Pollard continues his notion of marrying oddball song construction and quick blasts of crudely recorded pop brilliance of the older material, with the more intricate and developed 24-track approach of the last few years, creating an album that is positively "mid-fi." Co-producer Todd Tobias (brother to bassist Tim) leaves enough roughness around the edges for older GBV fans, avoiding the slick over-production that marred the boring, Ric Ocasek-helmed Do the Collapse.

A centerpiece of Earthquake Glue and a return to form, "The Best of Jill Hives" displays Pollard's canny knack for writing great hooks, recalling the band's salad days with ex-guitarist Tobin Sprout and ranking among classic GBV. The most intoxicating moment of the record, though, comes toward the end of "A Trophy Mule in Particular." As the music swells to its dramatic climax, Pollard sings "So where am I now/ For I am soldier," creating the kind of musical moment that pulls skin into gooseflesh. The song then promptly drops off into its haunting ending. Robert Pollard has made a career out of these truncated attacks; he knows how to knock us over with transcendent harmonies, but also not to linger too long.

Earthquake Glue departs from the kind of lo-fi, basement-birthed recordings of early GBV albums, and while Pollard and Co. don't quite achieve the status of their best album, 1996's Under the Bushes Under the Stars, the band moves forward, channeling the creativity and raw energy of earlier works into a more defined sonic palette.

— Scott Brothers (scottb@grandbovine.com)