Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse

Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse

1999

TVT Records

Format I Own it on: Shiny Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Teenage FBI  2. Zoo Pie  3. Things I Will Keep  4. Hold on Hope  5. In Stitches  6. Dragons Awake!  7. Surgical Focus  8. Optical Hopscotch  9. Mushroom Art   10. Much Better Mr. Buckles  11. Wormhole  12. Strumpet Eye  13. Liquid Indian  14. Wrecking Now  15. Picture Me Big Time  16. An Unmarketed Product


Oh, yea. I remember going to a Best Buy or something in the summer of '99 and picking up Pavement's "Terror Twilight" and GBV's "Do the Collapse" on the same day.  I first listened to the band with "Mag Earwhig!" and in between that album and "Do the Collapse" I bought every damn speck of GBV and GBV-related music I could get my hands on. I was insatiable. Buying up lo-fi by the truckload. And finally, after two whole years without a new GBV album, here it was..."Do the Collapse" emblazoned across its shiny, shocking white cover. 

I remember promptly throwing it into my car stereo and what came out of the speakers was Robert Pollard's voice for sure. Sounding kinda tin-canny over some keyboard pulse. "Alright, I can roll with this," I thought. "I've heard 'At Odds With Dr Genesis.'"  But then "Teenage FBI" suddenly explodes.  Guitars roaring, keyboards a-weedle-whoo-ing, stereo all separated, no ball of hiss between the instruments and my ears. My head almost spun around a full 360 degrees. I had kinda assumed "Under the Bushes, Under the Stars," was as slick as this band was going to get. No one told me that GBV were going slick! Nobody mentioned any Ric Ocasek production! It sounded so...wrong. 

I continued to drive around and listen to it. I couldn't shake the feeling that this felt like a Foo Fighters album or something. I got to "Hold on Hope" and it was a damn power ballad. Like Matchbox 20 or Collective Soul or Aerosmith would do.  The songs also seemed to repeat themselves over and over and over. Where was the brevity of old?  "Zoo Pie" and "In Stitches" each felt a million years long.  My only anchor were the lyrics, which still maintained their signature wordplay. So I would spend the next couple weeks cranking the album and chuckling along to "Dragons Awake!" (where the absurd lyrics and the straight-faced slickness felt hilariously incongruous) and "Liquid Indian" (where the evocative line, "I'm a born-again boot-stomping witch-humper!" won me over instantly). 

Then one day (a good 15 or so listens later)  I was showing someone "Liquid Indian" and that subtle, sneaky chorus suddenly hit a huge pleasure center in my brain. Goosebumps suddenly grew on my arms and my eyes grew wide. The slimy slickness suddenly felt like a nice, cool breeze blowing through my skull. I had learned to love "Do the Collapse."

I was uncomfortable with this at first and still maintained it only had a handful of good songs and that while listenable, it was still nowhere near classic GBV quality. But the goose bumps kept slowly coming. I had traditionally found that the goosebump phenomena manifested itself when sudden shifts in intensity or volume occurred (the end of VU's "Heroin" for example) but I found that I was getting goosebumps from nothing less than Pollard's well-modulated vocals (particularly in "Surgical Focus"'s pre-chorus and all throughout "Picture Me Big Time"). I have to give Ocasek huge credit in this area. This entire album is Pollard's best vocal performance, hands down. Oh, and listen to the guitars on this fucking thing. They're beautiful. Constantly shifting from chiming to crunching. Listen to the acoustic detail on "Wrecking Now" or the moody fills on "Mushroom Art" or "Picture Me Big Time" where Doug Gillard busts out every move in the classic rock playbook. 

Favorites: "Picture Me Big Time" is probably the single most overlooked, least-heralded GBV song. It's fucking perfect. Starts out carrying that minor-key, moody loneliness and just goes bigger and bigger until the final chorus where it feels like the wheels have all fallen off and the whole thing's going to explode as Pollard belts out "There are words that speak to everyone, which I will deliver to you..." in the most arena-ready, Roger Daltrey-esque fashion he can muster. Pollard finally nails universality.  There are the goosebumps, my friend. "Liquid Indian" is also an absurd masterpiece, which aside from maybe "Subspace Biographies," sports my favorite Pollard chorus. A well-polished beauty.  And more than possibly any other song, "Things I Will Keep" fulfills the promise of major-label GBV. When I would dream about a no-expenses-spared, big-budget GBV album, this song was what I  was hoping for. So packed with melody and melancholy that you can't help but push that "replay" button over and over. I would probably lump "Surgical Focus" in the same "idealized" GBV category. It's a flawless pop song.  Oh yea, and "Much Better Mr. Buckles" rocks. I crank the fuck out of that song whenever it comes on these days. 

Listening to this recently, I was also surprised at how much I loved "Wormhole." I had remembered it incorrectly as a silly, kid-boppy nursery rhyme but when that song kicks into the "Into the wormhole" section it's so damn powerful. So much good guitar. This was the album that made me a huge fan of Doug Gillard's work. "I Am a Tree" on "Mag Earwhig!" certainly perked my ears up, but it was his sustained performance on "Do the Collapse" and this song in particular that solidified his placement as my...gulp...favorite Guided by Voices guitarist (ducks). 

Least Faves: I'm still going with "Zoo Pie" and  the arena-progger "In Stitches." Either song would have made a decent 30 second snippet but 3 minutes? (Oh yea, I meant to mention this earlier. There are no song snippets. The closest thing is the quick, punky closer "An Unmarketed Product" (which rules, btw) clocking in a little over a minute). I know y'all are expecting me to say "Hold on Hope," but I kinda like that song. Again, I think it's the bizarre lyrics juxtaposed against the radio-ready power ballad that makes it work. GBV would never really do a song like "Hold on Hope" again, but I'm glad they did it at least once...

I think "Do the Collapse"'s main legacy was that it ended all the old speculation of "Just imagine what Pollard could do in a real studio." The fantasies of what professionally-recorded versions of "Bee Thousand" or "Alien Lanes" would sound like were officially over. This was it. This was widescreen GBV.  It turns out it was still an acquired taste and still not quite accessible. Still flawed and still beautiful. I'm not sure what the consensus is on "Do the Collapse." Not sure if GBV fans still dislike it. If so, I'd urge them to give it a few more listens. Bob was still on a roll...

Here's the updated ranking. I'm ranking this pretty high. Lots of top notch stuff and the songs that aren't' great are at least fairly hilarious. 

1. Guided by Voices: Alien Lanes

2. Guided by Voices: Bee Thousand

3.Guided by Voices: Under the Bushes, Under the Stars

4. Guided by Voices: Propeller

5. Robert Pollard: Waved Out

6. Tobin Sprout: Carnival Boy

7. Guided by Voices: Do the Collapse

8. Guided by Voices: Same Place the Fly Got Smashed

9. Robert Pollard: Kid Marine

10. Guided by Voices: Tonics and Twisted Chasers

11. Guided by Voices: Sunfish Holy Breakfast

12. Robert Pollard: Not In My Airforce

13. Guided by Voices: Mag Earwhig!

14. Guided by Voices: King Shit and the Golden Boys

15. Guided by Voices: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

16. Guided by Voices: Vampire on Titus

17. Guided by Voices: Sandbox

18. Guided by Voices: Forever Since Breakfast

19. Guided by Voices: Devil Between My Toes