Guided By Voices
Isolation Drills
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Guided By Voices
Isolation Drills
TVT, 2001
RiYL: The Who, The Kinks, old REM, Sugar |
It's an unfamiliar, and in some ways unfortunate, source of inspiration for 43-year-old GBV frontman Robert Pollard, who watched his personal life fall into shambles after the marathon tour in support of 1999's Do The Collapse. And while Pollard does not turn a blind eye to the skewed pop gems that made albums like Bee Thousand veritable indie rock classics, for the first time, his lyrics truly reveal the man behind the music.
Pollard has always draped his narratives in varying levels of irony and fantasy, and as such it's initially alarming how some of the tracks read like naked diary entries. Coming from a famously alcohol-fueled fellow, the elegiac "How's My Drinking?" has got to be one of Pollard's most direct songs ever: "How's my drinking? / I don't care about being sober / But I sure get around / In this town / To hell with my church bells / And leave me die / With you / I won't change."
String-tinged album closer "Privately" leaves a bit more to the imagination, but it's hard not to imagine the inner workings of what sounds like a poisoned relationship: "Before most of us knew it / Contagious words have bitten / Don't use them / Don't post them for broadcast / Keep then private and away / Like an old weapon."
The edgier subject matter is matched by Rob Schnapf's crisp, decidedly not-slick production and ace playing from the band, particularly guitarist Doug Gillard and thunderous drummer Jim MacPherson (who exited after the album was recorded). They all help elevate tracks like "Twilight Campfighter" without the lighter-waving excess of Do The Collapse cuts like "Hold On Hope." Any number of others burst forth with the kind of conviction that would make Pollard's idols the Who proud, from the stuttering "Want One" to the inch-thick riffing of "The Enemy," which slays naysayers with the pure power of rock.
It's a credit to Schnapf that he resisted the temptation to water down Pollard's often gloomy tunes. And despite the stadium rock flexing of cuts like "Run Wild" and "Pivotal Film," the material still bears intriguingly off-kilter constructions. The positively jubilant "Glad Girls" (the music, at least) leaps right into the power pop chorus and proceeds to repeat it more than a dozen times. The Sugar-style opener "Fair Touching" rides its own quizzical chorus ("But a queen's prize awaits / She might rub her legs") into rock Valhalla.
Pollard can also still get plenty weird for weird's sake. He prescribes reinvention in the pounding, angular "Skills Like This," with the caveat, "do you want me in your head?" The 55-second "Frostman" evokes fond memories of abstract four-track ditties from years ago, while the somber, acoustic "Sister, I Need Wine" sounds little like anything GBV has ever offered before.
In the end though, the band's refreshing ability to balance Pollard's weighty words with affecting music is what gives Isolation Drills its substance. In the strident "Unspirited," regret is a shared burden ("When you lose it all, you'll think of me / When you take the fall, you'll drink to me") made tolerable only by burying the pain deep. At once heartbreakingly bittersweet and melodically dazzling, "The Brides Have Hit Glass" chronicles love's grand crapshoot with rare precision:
One day I will know / That's it's a waste of time / And there's a better road ahead of me / I just don't know how to make it there / So I'll just hang around and take my chance / Once again I'll roll the dice / And try to hang on to my shrinking paradise
Pollard has always excelled at beaming songs through any vantage point but his own. But on Isolation Drills, there's no turning away from the bumpy roads. It's a thought-provoking cruise, a near masterpiece of correspondence from the battlefields of real life.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"