I’m not your typical Guided by Voices fan: my two favorite GBV albums are Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills. Bob Pollard’s singing and songwriting are, of course, “off the hook.” But, with the exception of a few songs on Bee Thousand, I just can’t pay much attention to the low fidelity of the pre-Collapse recordings that everyone raves about. I find the tape hiss and the questionable instrumentation too damn distracting.
With this in mind, I approached The Electrifying Conclusion with a big question: would seeing Bob Pollard live and on stage finally make me revisit the lo-fi recordings? The answer, as you would imagine, is both “yes” and “no.”
This DVD is a must for any GBV completist because it contains four hours of Pollard and Co. doing what they do best: playing quirky, melodic, and oftentimes downright strange music. Of course, as is his custom, Pollard is drunk by the time he sings “Things I Will Keep.” (I read in an interview once that Pollard hated working with Ric Ocasek because Ocasek forced him to be sober while in the studio.) The band is not drinking as heavily as is Pollard, and they keep their chops as the night wears on. By the time Pollard hits the songs in “Encore #1,” he is visibly drunk, slurring, and uncomfortable. But he still sings all the words in all the right places. It’s a miracle, really, when you think about it.
Everyone in the audience is drunk, too, so they don’t seem to notice that Bob is less and less able to be coherent as the night wears on. They say that part of the fun of being at a GBV show is simply being there; I’d have to agree. What looks a bit tired on stage (Pollard has, after all, gone gray) must be incredible live. The DVD, shot on what looks to be digital video from many angles by a crew of cameramen, captures much of the energy of the live performance. I would have preferred sound that came in from the soundboard directly, but that’s not really even the point. The way the songs sound is secondary to the spectacle of the show.
And maybe that’s just it. This DVD is more frustrating than anything because I know, despite my limited tolerance of early GBV albums, that Bob Pollard may be one of the finest songwriters in the world (if not one of the most prolific). His fake British accent, way with melody and harmony, and short, tight songs are a pop musician’s dream. I know that he was disappointed that his albums for TVT Records, recorded digitally and with big-name producers, didn’t thrust him in the spotlight. I was disappointed, too. But mainstream music is a fickle thing and Bob Pollard doesn’t fit anywhere in it.
This DVD is worth the money. I don’t know that I’ll come back to it every week, a level of commitment that would surely be necessary to appreciate every song and to learn every nuance, but it functions as intended: it is a time capsule of the final show by a man – and a band – that elevated lo-fi indie rock into an art form. Whether that art is Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” or your grandmother’s velvet Elvis is a matter of personal preference. I’m just excited to see where Bob Pollard goes next. |