Guided by Voices
Mag Earwhig!
1997, Matador Records
For indie rocker kids, there was an uncomfortable truth about Guided by Voices and in 1997 they finally had to face it.
Robert Pollard likes and is very much influenced by prog-rock.
And not in a “math rock” way, which was cool back then. Bands who were into crazy time signatures and got compared to King Crimson and their LP was out on Touch & Go. That was okay.
Pollard probably digs that stuff, too, but he’s more into Peter Gabriel’s Genesis. He likes concept albums and all of that mystical, pastoral British junk. Fantasy imagery and songs that might kick in with the good part after about four minutes of build-up because kids in 1973 (a year when Pollard turned 16) had the attention span for that. Or at least they were stoned enough to go with it.
Yep, the guy known for recording songs that barely last a minute in his basement was influenced by the most long-winded and indulgent rock genre around.
Artists. They’re complicated.
Now, none of this was ever a secret. Music journalists back then often wrote about Pollard as indie rock’s cool record collector uncle who had good advice about the old stuff that you need to hear. He knew his 60s freakbeat, his 70s Krautrock and his 80s underground. You couldn’t run much by him that he didn’t know about. He also praised Devo and Alice Cooper and Wire and The Who… and Genesis in their early 1970s wilder years.
Genesis was a band who dealt in crazed lyrical imagery and songs that were expansive, but also easy on the ears. They didn’t do much of that show-off stuff that gives proggers a bad name. Maybe their keyboard player, Tony Banks, might put on his flashy pants from time to time, but Genesis was not a stereotypical “wank-off” band. Rather, they were genuinely theatrical. Their albums had the diversity of a stage show. Quiet moments. Menacing moments. Booming show-stoppers. Melody everywhere. In concert, Peter Gabriel even wore outrageous costumes, a different one for every song.
The first time I heard a Genesis album (Foxtrot, which boasts the great 23-minute suite “Supper’s Ready” across nearly all of side two) back in ’98 or so, it hit me right away.
WHOA, this sounds just like GBV, but with more synthesizers and longer songs.
Not EVERY song is a perfect fit, but in GBV’s more oddly haunting and strange moments, you can often hear what Pollard learned from Genesis about how to capture a melody and occupy a moment. I even think that Pollard sings like Peter Gabriel. He has that same glowering ringmaster thing that Gabriel had. Neither is some kind of opera singer. They sing like normal guys, but with a strong personality and plenty of conviction about whatever weirdness is in their songs. Both Gabriel and Pollard sing like they know exactly what every cryptic image in their lyrics means.
If the argument of Bee Thousand is that you can get drunk in a basement with a consumer-grade multi-track cassette recorder and still compete with The Beatles, three years later, Mag Earwhig! makes another argument. It says that if you’ve got a band who can play the shit out of anything, it’s time to go big and make that art-rock record that you’ve been dreaming about.
Cobra Verde sound great here. They don’t play on the whole album, but when they do, it’s some of the best, warmest classic rock whomp that’s ever been on a Guided by Voices record to this day. There’s a natural air between the instruments and plenty of room to go heavy or light. Cobra Verde’s own Don Depew is credited with engineering those particular tracks and he knew what the hell he was doing.
Like Pollard’s solo album, Not in My Airforce, this record is a patchwork of different sounds and different collaborators, but mastered with care to make it all sound somewhat uniform. A mere three songs, to my ears, register as “lo-fi”.
Still, it’s all over the place. It sprawls just like classic GBV. It packs twenty-one songs, only eight of which feature Cobra Verde (more show up on B-sides and whatnot). At the time, this was talked about as a bold new Guided by Voices, but past players show up everywhere. The old band even turns up on one of its best songs, the stuck-in-my-head-forever anthem “Jane of the Waking Universe”. Tobin Sprout recorded three songs and is one of the first voices that you hear on the album as his high vocal wings over Pollard’s own low vocal in opening announcement “Can’t Hear the Revolution”, which sounds less like a song and more like a strange prayer.
Cobra Verde don’t even make their entrance until the third song, which is a thunderous version of Doug Gillard’s dirty, dirty, downright filthy (and great) pop monster “I Am a Tree”. (I’ll talk more about it when we get to the single, which, to my memory, came out after the album.)
After that, Cobra Verde come and go, showing up every two of three songs to supply some muscle in between Pollard’s wandering.
Is this really a prog-rock record?
NO. It only feels like one. Pollard makes bold moves with his sequencing here. He shapes the album to sound mystical. He often goes for slow moments or dirges at times when past GBV albums taught us to expect another pop explosion. Also, its short songs don’t feel like the ones on Alien Lanes. They don’t sound banged-out in the basement and who cares if somebody’s out of tune? The shorties here are mostly cleanly recorded (or given a good shine in mastering) and sound deliberate. Each one comes off like part of a concept album.
Which brings me to the question of IS this a concept album?
NO, but the sleeve art teases the idea that it might be if that’s what you want. What’s a “Mag Earwhig”? The short title track doesn’t tell us much, but the gatefold spread says that it’s a character. Full name: Magnificent Earwhig! “I am small. Yet big. I am everybody.” Pollard also follows up most of the printed lyrics for each song with a brief and curious parenthetical note as if he’s dropping clues about What It All Means. Now spark up a joint, put on the record and go from there.
Me, I don’t think I’ve ever understood or bothered to follow the storyline of any concept album in my life. I like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis, but couldn’t tell you anything about the story that I guess it tells. I’ve never paid attention. I still like it, though.
Mag Earwhig! is an album for people like me. We enjoy a lot of those old records for their heavy, oddball atmosphere, but we never dig too deep into whatever the hell these British loons are talking about.
Much like how one’s appreciation for David Lynch is enhanced by keeping in mind that he’s an abstract painter, it’s helpful to remember that Robert Pollard is a collage artist (as with almost all of his records, the striking sleeve art here is his own work; it’s also a rare piece for which Pollard notes its title in the album credits: “The Astral City Slicker”. Another clue to the story, maybe?).
He writes songs and makes visual art and then fits all of that together in ways that he finds interesting. This time he wanted to lean into that 70s art-rock vibe. That Genesis-style ethereal buzz. An album that gropes at the British flair for theatre in the best way that a bunch of guys from Ohio who like to bang out records quickly can.
Even the title Mag Earwhig! reeks of the stage. It includes an essential exclamation point, like Hello, Dolly! or Oh! Calcutta!
The reaction to this album at the time was mixed.
Many people who were attached to the old lo-fi sound turned away from it. Many pop fiends who saw GBV as Ohio’s screwy, drunk Beatles and who weren’t much into their prog bent gave this the old thumbs down.
Pollard also looked like a jerk to some because he just fired his old band and hired a whole new one and yet kept the name–and it all happened so FAST. He was like a guy who dumped his super-likable girlfriend and then replaced her the next week with someone that you’re not so sure about.
People didn’t realize that Guided by Voices are not The Beatles; they’re more like The Fall. From the beginning, GBV always changed. They’re one man’s vision and the supporting players have come and gone in the past and will continue to come and go in the future. They also might not have known that the big changes started when Tobin Sprout quit the band–the loss of Sprout seemed to be the major sticking point–because he had a newborn child and couldn’t schedule world tours in between being a good father.
There’s already enough drama when a band starts making real money in their early 20s.
When a band unexpectedly hits it big in their late 30s, it’s a whole other bucket of piss. People have lives that they can’t just drop to play in a rock band. People sometimes have bad habits that they’ve settled into. Players might get content with their abilities and don’t see any reason to “improve”–and perhaps rightfully so by their metric.
Meanwhile, Robert Pollard steered the GBV ship and honed the vision for well over a decade at this point. He “owns” the band. (Fun fact: Pollard was the only member of the band who was actually signed to Matador.) He’d lost band members before. He’d kicked people out before. Things change and you move on. Forward is the only direction to go. Pollard learned that years ago. For a band like GBV, the songs are the backbone anyway–and he’s got no shortage of those.
None of this drama bothered me in the slightest back in June of 1997 when this was the first GBV album that I made a point of buying on release day. We didn’t have Amazon Prime. I had to drag my ass to a record store on Tuesday, buy the CD off their “New Release” rack and then drag my ass back home to play it because my stupid ’87 Chevy Nova only had a cassette deck.
I was home from college for the summer. I worked some silly jobs, had no girlfriend and listened to music all of the time. That was my life.
Also, I loved Mag Earwhig! back then and I still do.
It’s got some of Pollard’s most beautiful songs to date. My favorites here are the slow ones. Over two decades later, I still love them. The more rocking singles, such as “Bulldog Skin”, don’t represent the album all that well.
When it comes to the jewels here, I’m talkin’ about “The Finest Joke is Upon Us”, a big favorite in this house. I don’t know what Pollard was thinking when he wrote this ballad’s mysterious lines and its weathered, yet powerful, melody, but I think it’s about death. In the end, maybe life was all a big joke. With time, maybe you finally get the punchline. Sounds plausible to me. The song is sober, but lovely and somehow not at all depressing. Play it at my funeral, please.
“Sad If I Lost It” is another heartbreaker. Sparkling, but also a little odd, It sounds like Genesis’s alternate universe stab at an AM radio hit. What would make you sad if you lost it? That’s what this song is about.
“Learning to Hunt” is a cosmically sparse ballad that disturbs your soul, but doesn’t disturb the 2 AM crickets.
“Now to War” is all gorgeous melody that looks good naked with only voice and guitar.
And I’m not sure what to call a weird bird like “The Colossus Crawls West”, but from its sleepy start to its intense finale, it’s on fire with drama. I don’t know where we are exactly in Pollard’s fake rock opera at this point, but some serious shit just happened in that song.
As for the rockers, “Not Behind the Fighter Jet” is massive. I think it should have been the first single. What was on Pollard’s mind when he reshuffled the band? What did he think about the risks? I think this song might offer some insight. To a real blood-rusher of a tune, it’s about not listening to what everyone is telling you to do and instead following your gut.
“I’m not behind the fighter jet/ I’d much rather back a simple girl.”
The “fighter jet” vs. “the simple girl”. The comparison is ingcongruous, but perfect.
The “fighter jet” is what other people want for him.
The “simple girl” is his vision of what he wants for himself.
You can’t miss a fighter jet, but you can lose a simple girl–and it can happen so easily. One minute she’s there. The next, she’s gone. That’s part of why she’s so valuable.
The “simple girl” is the muse. She’s why you’re here. You lose her and you’re fucked.
That’s the real concept of Mag Earwhig!, I think.
One day you’re a celebrated band of the lo-fi “movement” that everyone’s talking about. The next day, you can’t hear the revolution anymore. From there you reflect on loss and the things that you have to lose, but a little sex gets you out of that funk.
Now, you’re good. Getting older even feels like a good thing. There are so many things to think about outside of yourself. Even the lives of flies are interesting. Records themselves become a metaphor for the human parade. A roaming, roving active mind that seeks beauty is what saves you.
When you have to decide between the fighter jet and the simple girl, you know exactly which one to choose.
If it doesn’t go well you’re still confident enough to say “Shove it ’cause I’ll just stay/ Like an ugly unwanted stray/ Don’t care what you say” and you mean it–and that’s how you close an album side.
Now, it’s time to dream. “Long live the dream”, as Pollard says in hushed side 2 opener “Hollow Cheek”.
Also, “mysterious engines run/ To keep the dream from ending”, as Pollard sings in the next song, the Genesis-kissed “Portable Men’s Society”, a rare synthesizer-heavy song for GBV and the album’s most luscious slow-burner.
Sometimes you dream about the people you love, about the people who make you laugh, as in “Little Lines”.
Sometimes you dream about yourself in a vision in which your past and present seem to be happening at the same time.
Sometimes you dream about death.
Sometimes in your dream, you merely “smile like an electric child” because “the bastard of an ex-warhorse kicks” and you can’t make head or tail of it.
Maybe you dream about going to war. You dream about Jane of the Waking Universe and a Colossus who crawls west.
Fast asleep, conjuring crazy visions, you’re one “Mute Superstar” for sure. All is quiet, but there’s a badass guitar riff going on in your head.
And how do dreams end? Often with a jolt. A mad rush. A “Bomb in the Bee-Hive”. In the dream, it’s “precisely 9 o’clock” and you’re not sure why that matters, but it does. I had a dream last week in which a snake was about to bite me and I woke up exactly when it struck. Eyes wide open. Sitting up in bed. Looking for the snake. Not quite sure of reality for few seconds.
It was all a dream. But what happened next in it?
“Illuminate the mystery
The film is not for view
The film is not for you”