PASTE: tollbooth (nov 03)

Here's an oddity: a late 80's power-trio record, itself a relic of a mostly forgotten movement (post-punk, post-Minutemen, American stoner rock), with the original vocals erased and new ones laid down by prolific Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard. Musically, it's a grimy funk mash, with bass lines that roil and thud like Primus back in the day, while guitars flash and roll over the surface. It's very much what you'd imagine a fusion of punk, jazz, metal and psychedelia would sound like--if the mere juxtaposition of those words could actually tell you anything--while Pollard's new vocals and lyrics show, at very least, a commendable attentiveness to the material and demonstrate that testosterone surreality Pollard can seemingly turn on and off like a switch. (On "Mascara Snakes" he claims to be God's younger brother--at least I think that's what he says--while his voice echoes with a satisfying epic feel over the leftover ring of a final chord). Both the lyrics and the vocals are new--the titles of everything have been changed, including the album (originally Power Toy)--yielding an album that'll give stoner-punks, curious fans and reader-response literary theorists much to consider.

Also in the same issue:

Among the most notable of his collaborations is last May's Beard of Lightning, on which Pollard sings his own new new lyrics over the instrumental tracks from the final album by '80s power trio Phantom Tollbooth, Power Toy (1988). Pollard considered himself a "fan" of Phantom Tollbooth's music but felt the original album's vocal stylings went "too much in the direction of indie rock," he said. "I told (Off Records president Chris Slusarenko) I'd be interested to make that into more of a classic rock album." Slusarenko contacted Phantom Tollbooth's original members, who gave both their consent and the original album tapes to the project, thus helping to originate an entire potential subgenre of Bob Pollard sing-along records--surely a postmodern theorist's dream. "I'd like to redo Houses of the Holy," he laughs.