Guided By Voices: Mag Earwhig! (1997)

Over 39 albums in 36 years (and counting, rapidly) the band behind the name Guided By Voices changed considerably (and often) and made a great variety of records with an almost countless assortment of musical contributors, all of whom defer to Robert Pollard. Some albums were slick, some were packed with classics, some were patchworks of scratchy, lo-fi mini-masterpieces, and some were just plain weird. None more so than 1997’s Mag Earwhig!, though not for the usual reasons. 

By this point, Guided By Voices had finally taken hold and were on the cusp of major label-hood when guitarist Tobin Sprout, whose contributions were far fewer than Bob’s but so very great in their own right, left the band after 1996’s Under The Bushes Under The Stars. Bob took that opportunity to sack the rest of the band, instead hiring Cobra Verde to back him up, and pushing onward. 

This partnership would last one album and tour before Bob again sacked everyone (except for guitarist Doug Gillard, who continues to play in GbV to this day) and built a new band. The lone album to come from this transitional lineup features 21 songs. A handful, however, are holdovers from the prior lineup, so those dudes  feature on songs like “I Am Produced” and “Jane Of The Waking Universe”, while the new band can be heard on stuff like “Bulldog Skin”, “Portable Men’s Society”, and the Gillard-penned “I Am A Tree”. This is all stitched together with lo-fi solo Bob tracks, most of which are fragmentary, some lucid, some obtuse. Basically, this is a typical GbV album. It’s just the personnel (and circumstances) that make this a bit of a tough nut. 

Following this album would come a Pollard solo album called Waved Out and then two albums for TVT records, starting with 1999’s Rik Ocasek-produced Do The Collapse. That album kicked off what is more or less the second great GbV lineup. The most commercially successful version of GbV, they would produce five albums over the next four years and tour the world many times over, before splitting in 2004. 

Meanwhile, Cobra Verde went back to being Cobra Verde and that was that.