33 rebellions per minute
1998
Kleenex Girl Wonder, GRAHAM SMITH IS THE COOLEST PERSON ALIVE
K.G.W. is a pseudonym for Graham F Smith, an 18-year-old who's spent
_way_ too much me listening to Guided By Voices records". There are many
ways of playing garage-rock guitar, many ways of singing, even many ways
of using el cheapo recording equipment, that do not sound like
PROPELLER/ VAMPIRE ON TITUS outtakes, and Graham is not going out of his
way to find them. Nor is hard to notice that he's recorded 20 songs,
many under 2 minutes, with Pollard-y titles like "What Is Your Posture?" and "May Be Icy", mostly running into each other
instead of frittering away time on properly constructed endings.
But first of all, musically, his GBV imitations are quite good; much
better, frankly, than many of the random discharges that GBV's Robert
Pollard spews out at hundreds-per-year rates. This is certainly not
because Smith is a more talented writer; he has none of the gift for (or
desire to even try) the melancholic ballads like "I Am A Scientist" or
"Tractor Rape Chain" or "the Official Ironman's Rally Song" that I love
best about GBV, nor is there anything as sublimely silly as "Kicker Of
Elves". But Smith seems to actually care about the songs he asks us to
buy, rather than slapping them onto tape and considering them
automatically finished, which seems to have been Pollard's procedure on
ALIEN LANES and his solo outings. Besides, Smith has other ideas. "Put
It In The Desk" and "You Need Me" and "Prince Of The Major Leagues" are
built around catchy synthesizer hooks of the chintzy and burbly
varieties. "The Muscles-Into Mountains", danceable noir, could almost be
Portishead, but it's too fast and appealing and reliant on the
keyboard's pitch-bend wheel. "Ponyoak" is what GBV would be if Pollard's
key rock influence been the early Beatles, not the Who. "I Invented The
Drums" is disco for the robots on the strip-mine floor. "Turn The Bitch
Off" (which has no offensive content, though the tradeoff is that "Data
For The Turtle In The Maze" has no nonsense content) stars spliced,
cut-up, echoey drum lines a la Nine Inch Nails's "Piggy". "I Can't
Humanize" is jazzy and jungle-y at once, not to mention weird. "Great
Alcoholics" buoyantly builds on a piano and false violin and fake
fanfare note and more drum-machine.
There's no shattering revelations to be had here; I think Graham is too
young to ask that of anyway. There's a large batch of good, charming
songs and half-songs. Each is usefully covered by the same make and
model of sonic grime. And all the melodies are composed by the distinct
Graham Smith method. Which is the same method they teach by
correspondence at the Robert Pollard School of Music. So? This is bad?
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