Heard Here

Guided By Voices
Isolation Drills
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Robert Pollard, the last survivor of the original Guided By Voices lineup (a few years ago he kicked the rest of the founders out and added a new backing band) is not without some genius. That’s what makes this album all the more depressing. The songwriting is pallid, the lyrics mostly garbage, and the song titles (usually the most consistently wonderful and strange portion of Pollard’s writing) are mostly flat and uninspired. 
Maybe Pollard is trying to tell too much without being concrete enough. In “Fair Touching,” for example, Pollard sings, “Currently Fabulous/And perhaps at last/The song you sing will have meaning.” Many songs that Pollard pens here are too self-conscious and referential to be as interesting as his old songs, which were whimsical sketches of characters or moments. 
For example, Pollard sings unintelligible garble like, “It’s cold in the morning/When scenesters exit/Into thin air,” “You know I hate to be around her/When she’s like that/I wrote a song once about her/Called “The Brides Have Hit Glass’” from “The Brides Have Hit Glass.” 
The music itself, is pretty terrible. About 10 of the songs on this 16-track album sound unbelievably similar. Guitars, rocking and shimmering in the forefront, lots of bass drum and Pollard’s vocals buried just under the guitars. Once in a while some keyboard noodling or hasty string arrangement shakes things up a little, with little success. 
The combination of bland songwriting and pumped-up production, makes the album pretty worthless. The worst part of it is the inclusion of the 53-second song “Frostman,” recorded by Pollard on 4-track (lyrically and melodically the only song worth listening to more than once) which outshines the rest of the songs to such an extent that it’s almost maddening. 
Pollard needs to return to his roots in a big way. Overproduction seems to have undermined the original ideals of the formerly lo-fi Guided by Voices, and given Pollard an excuse to hide poor lyrics behind bad music with slick production

-Chris DeWeese

Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Malkmus 

The sleeve design may look like it did in the old days, he’s still got that voice and even a chic new mullet, but no matter how much Stephen Malkmus tries, the magic of Pavement’s early recordings can’t be recaptured.
The former Pavement frontman’s first solo effort sounds mischievously similar to late 1990s Pavement — nonsensical lyrics, lazy sounding guitars and charming pop jangle — but Stephen Malkmus leans in the direction of mainstream rock even more than Pavement’s most recent effort, Terror Twilight. Most of the songs are jangly guitar-dominated cuts, obviously indebted to Big Star and Television, but without the rough edges of either of those bands.
Only after two or three listenings do a few songs emerge as standouts. The rest sound stagnant — the sound of a musician who’s run out of ideas.
In “Church on White” Malkmus makes use of pedal arrangements similar to those used in Pavement’s Brighten the Corners. The tempo is slow, but the song doesn’t convey the poignancy of “Home” or “Stop Breathing,” two of Pavement’s more successful slow-tempoed tunes.
“Jenny and the Ess Dog” typifies the sound Malkmus seems to want to achieve on the record — eminently listenable and slick-sounding. The clean guitar sound is pleasant and the surprising direct lyrics detailing the affair of a 31-year-old guy in a ’60s cover band and an 18-year-old girl are mildly entertaining, but the song could easily be mistaken for Matchbox 20 or any other anonymous-sounding alternative band.
While most of the songs are tolerable, a few are outright stinkers, most obviously “Vague Space,” on which Joanna Bolme adds keyboards that sound ineffective and hokey.
For an album without any songs that make the listener perk up and pay astute attention, the mainstream music press — worshippers of the standard indie rock canon — has heaped lofty praise on Stephen Malkmus. Malkmus’s repertoire no longer includes the driving originality that put Pavement on the map. Listeners and critics should consider the fact that praising music like this perpetuates the production of bland rock ’n roll now hailed as quality indie rock.

-Nick Stillman

Howe
Confluence

Unless you’re working at a cheap club in Memphis Tenn., attempting to be Elvis is not generally a good idea. Howe’s newest, Confluence, is a testament to this, with the failure of its cheap take on the King’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” This song is disturbing mostly because it sounds like a circus tune gone wrong, which is actually how most of the album can be fairly summed up. 
Confluence, issued on Chicago’s Thrill Jockey, rocks once or twice. Number one happens with the plainly titled “Cold,” which despite the lyrics “She moved to town with her favorite tool/Now see how cool tools to cruel,” manages to incorporate lovely piano melodies and fun percussion like the shaker.
The lyrics (or “Lyrical Luggage” according to the CD insert) are where Howe’s lack of artistic genius is most obvious to a first time listener. On the opening track, “3 Sisters,” Howe describes the life and times of Capacity, Dilemma and Gazelle, who are apparently sisters. 
Maybe he’s copying Jeffrey Eugenides and Virgin Suicides, but this song just doesn’t measure up. “Dilemma loves it when she is only wrong,” Howe croaks (and that’s really the only word for it). 
Howe does explore the world of atypical instrumentation, layering the usual guitar and drum sounds with the “loopy casio” and “lip flip.” One of the album’s decent tunes, “Hatch,” refrains from the instrument experimentation by remaining a simple guitar and drum tune reminiscent of mid-90s Chris Isaak: plenty of slide guitar, a country twang that actually rocks and plenty of romanticism. But, again the lyrics ruin the end of the song, as Howe whispers, “Are we/Thrilled to death here/With details of dispatch?”
Howe could have made Confluence an album worth a second listen, but it’s just not quite ripe. Every song is lacking that extra something, and though simplicity can work for others, when Howe uses the pipe organ and sings about the rust on his truck, something doesn’t equate. 
-Kari Wethington