"Is it better to burn out than fade away?" It's sort of the "to be or not to be" for the any rock band, perhaps even before Neil Young sang it back in '79. And, with a few notable exceptions, the "burning out" camp seems the more artistically sound choice. I mean, c'mon, yer honor, I respectfully submit to you the case of "The Beatles v. The Rolling Stones." Martyrs and speculation notwithstanding, there's something to be said for a band collapsing under the pressure of "artistic differences" if that means blatant cash-ins and crappy music.
But what about your aging but devoted fan base? Yep, that's me. I remember the feeling, listening to Polvo's "Fractured (Like Chandeliers)" back in '94. It was a WTF gut-punch of a song – while the guitars and song itself were being bent to their very limits, everything was held together with some indefinably magical internal logic. Today's Active Lifestyles was an even better example: from the woozy opening salvo of "Thermal Treasure" to the last ringing chords of the epic "Gemini Cusp", this was a band operating seemingly without blueprint. Sure, there were sonic precedents, but while you could hear echoes of Sonic Youth's altered tunings and microtonal dissonance, there was just so much *otherness* there, you couldn't accuse them of anything but blatant originality.
Unfortunately, this was during the great alternative rock swap meet of the 90s, and any band that demonstrated even a – scratch that – *any* band was being sucked up in the great alt-rock land-grab. And amidst that tide of Letters to Cleos and Better than Ezras, it was tough for a hard-to-label contender like Polvo to get a foothold. After '97's lackluster Shapes, Polvo called it quits.
Fast forward 12 years, to the strange futureworld of the Blogosphere, where anyone with QWERTY and an opinion can resurrect forgotten indie-rock dinosaurs from the amber for reunion tours. See The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Chavez, Slint (!)... Perhaps Polvo isn't dead after all...
After listening to the dizzy opening riff of "Right the Relation" there seems to be a decent case for the advance of cryogenics. But as greedy of a 90's alt-rock whore as I am, I still can't get over the niggling suspicion that something's wrong. Can I actually *hear* Ash Bowie's voice now, singing groan-worthy rhymes of "relation" to "station" to "creation"? Was there a John Bonham-styled rumbling drum triplet I just heard? It all becomes clear when the guitar solo kicks in at 2:41 – yes, an honest-to-goodness pentatonic blues solo – this is *rawk*, a la Foghat or Bad Company or, egads, does it matter? WTF, indeed, but not of the good variety. It's like someone constructed an unholy golem from 90's post-punk and sticky 70's Camaro 8-tracks.
But it's not all that dire. Once I got over my indignant "How could you?!", I realized there's some good stuff here. Despite the criticisms, there's undeniable power in songs like "Beggar's Bowl" and "The Pedlar". I feel a little weird about the fist-pumping to a Polvo song, but dude, there's *power chords* in there, man. And while the shambly "City Birds" seems conventional by Polvo standards, there's still Ash Bowie's and Dave Brylawski's two guitars coiling around each other, mutant DNA still intact. An unholy golem, maybe, but doesn't that feat still require magic?
--written by M@
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