*** Guided by Voices

DO THE COLLAPSE

(TVT)

Half the kick of seeing Guided by Voices is watching former-grade-school-teacher-turned-rock-and-roll savior Robert Pollard make like Roger Daltrey with the mike cord and Jackie Chan with his feet. The rest comes from hearing all those hissy, home-recorded nuggets that Pollard and his Dayton pals have been four-tracking for the past 20 years recast as proud-to-be-loud rock tunes. So anyone familiar with the stage version of GBV won't be entirely surprised by the big rock production of Do the Collapse, the first full-on studio recording by the "band," who now count Pollard as the only founding member with former Cobra Verde guitarist Doug Gillard, ex-Breeder drummer Jim MacPherson, and former Amp/Breeder bassist Nate Farley. And now that you know Ric Ocasek produced the disc, there's no reason to be blindsided by the Cars-y synths that pop up on the opening number.

The prolific Pollard and his extended GBV family (including Tobin Sprout) have, under various guises, been flooding the market with their clever brand of homemade guitar pop ever since Bee Thousand turned their little drinking game into the hottest oddity to come out of Ohio since Pere Ubu's Datapanik -- and for those of you who prefer the old, unpolished GBV to the slick new one, there's Pollard's amusing new Lexo and the Leapers release Ask Them: #2 in the Fading Captain Series (Rockathon). So from a marketing perspective, a new band, label, and studio approach make a lot of sense. The results sound, well, a lot more like Oasis than most indie enthusiasts would probably like to admit. And that's not a bad thing at all. But it's hard not to come away with the sense that, as well as GBV's songs hold up to Ocasek's polishing, the time for Pollard to become the rock star he'd like to be has come and gone.

-- Matt Ashare