Done the Collapse

And it wouldn't work if the band had brought in former Cars frontman and Big Name Producer Ric Ocasek to record the album, as it did on Do the Collapse. He would have sanded down the rough edges, multitracked them into oblivion. Yes, he would have.

You could say that, given the group's lo-fi origins (best heard on the seven albums GbV released between 1987's Devil Between My Toes and 1994's Bee Thousand), Ocasek was around for shock value. Which he was, sort of: He was the deep end of a pool Pollard and the band had only dipped their toes in before. He was the extreme, the guy with the slick production techniques, the guy with definite ideas about how a band, this band, should sound. Some good, some not so good.

"I would have done things differently," Pollard admits. "I kind of put everything in Ric's hands, because I was a little bit intimidated by him. He's not really an intimidating guy; he's a really nice guy, a really laid-back guy. But it was our first time in the studio, and I was just like, 'Do it, Ric. Make a record.' There are a lot of things he did that I love, and there are a few things that I would not do again. Some of the keyboard things. I'm just not a big keyboard person. There were some things I would do differently, but I think it's a good record, and I don't have any regrets about it. The only regret I have about the record is 'Hold On Hope.' I wish I wouldn't have written that song," he says, laughing, to himself, at himself, for including the somewhat-syrupy ballad on Do the Collapse. "That's the only one. The original version of 'Hold On Hope' was much more kick-ass."

It should be noted that, while "Hold on Hope" prominently featured strings--a Guided by Voices first--that is not the reason Pollard doesn't like the version of the song included on Do the Collapse. If anything, it's just the opposite: "I wouldn't mind doing an album of just me singing, the entire album, over strings," Pollard says.

In fact, the strings that show up on "The Enemy" and "Unspirited" and the disc-closing "Privately" (all courtesy of The Soldier String Quartet) are one of Isolation Drills' strengths, wrapping around the melody, turning each song into thick, unbreakable cables. Pollard doesn't hesitate to agree.

"I'm kind of a prog-rock freak, but I don't like keyboards," he begins. "So there's a problem there, because prog-rock is associated with keyboards. What I'm into doing is stretching the songs out, making suites that have 10 or 15 changes in them. But I don't want keyboards. I want it to be really powerful. Strings complement that type of music. The strings sound great in 'The Enemy.' I want the whole next album to kind of be like 'The Enemy.' But, you know, it won't. I always have some kind of vision for the next record, but it never turns out that way."

Isolation Drills comes as close as possible to matching the songs Pollard heard in his head, as he added music to the lyrics he wrote on that cross-country road trip. Much of, if not most of, the credit is due to the band: guitarist-sounding board Doug Gillard, bassist Tim Tobias, guitarist Nate Farley and drummer Jim MacPherson, since replaced by Jon McCann, ex of Pollard fave American Flag. But part of it, at the very least, is thanks to producer Rob Schnapf, who returned the focus to the songs instead of how they're recorded.

No longer does the group sound like a Beatles-Who-Cheap Trick mix tape forgotten in a shoebox, or a dustbin/cutout bin-bound compilation album of never-were garage-rock heroes. Nor does the band sound like the Cars outtakes Ocasek forced on it. For once, and finally, Guided by Voices sounds like Guided by Voices: guitars up front, Pollard out further, drums changing your pulse rate, beer (Budweiser or Rolling Rock--you make the call) spilling over everything. The answer, Schnapf's answer at least, didn't come from any studio trickery or big ideas. It was simple.

"Yeah, he was going for the rock sound," Pollard says of Schnapf, who's worked with the Foo Fighters and Beck and Elliott Smith. Not that Pollard was aware of Schnapf's résumé. He wanted Schnapf because of his approach. "He was actually interested in doing what we wanted to do. I mean, obviously, he had his own vision for the songs, but it was more important for him that they sounded--you know, I'd told him what I've been trying to strive for the last few years is to get us to sound on record like what we do live. And I think this record does--without sounding too raw--I think it does sound more like we do live."