Polvo

Heirs to the aesthetic of Television, Polvo exploited the interplay between harmonic roughness and modern neuroses in a way very similar to Television, but they push the center of gravity of guitar rock toward cacophony rather than metaphysical trance. The result is a harsh, disorderly sound that has little in common with rock songs anymore. In a sense, Polvo does seriously what My Bloody Valentine does playfully: elevating rock music from the instinctive to the subliminal. Compared to other past experimenters (Captain Beefheart, for the most obvious example), Polvo are not anchored to any particular genre. Their music retains only faint traces of rock, blues, country, etc. In this sense as well, it is pure abstraction.

Polvo are one of the flagship bands of North Carolina college rock—and also its most challenging representatives.

Formed in Chapel Hill by guitarists and singers Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski, Polvo debuted in February 1991 with the single Can I Ride (Kitchen Puff), marked by metallic noise and rhythmic fractures à la Sonic Youth, reinforced with a Dinosaur Jr.–style chorus.

Their real breakthrough came with Vibracobra (Rockville), a November 1991 single that fully showcased the band’s polytonal guitar work. The track is propelled by a resonant tremolo (making even Sonic Youth pale) allowed to vibrate in the void for a few seconds, then driven by a titanic rhythm section; dissonant chimes create a dreamlike atmosphere, melodic counterpoints weave through the chorus; the vocals and riffs are entirely secondary to the harmony, somewhat like in the Feelies. This atonal micro-concert, with an intensity almost raga-rock, redefines the concept of a rock song in a way only Television, Sonic Youth, and a few others have done. Part of the credit goes to the rhythm section of Steve Popson (bass) and Eddie Watkins (drums).

The idea behind Cor-Crane Secret (Merge, 1992), their debut album, is to make cerebral rock not to sophisticate the harmonies but to brutalize them. Polvo invent a “scruffy” progressive rock that seems like a version of Henry Cow for the spastically inclined. Aside from the new displays of instrumental skill on Kalgon (whose guitar chords create a dreamy, exotic atmosphere) and Duped (their fully dissonant, syncopated version of “grunge”), the Sonic Youth influences (on Sense Of It) and Television influences (on Well Is Deep) still stand out. The best tracks are Bend Or Break, another raga-rock melody that rides a rollercoaster of moods, almost like an improvised blues jam culminating in tempestuous moments, and Channel Changer, perhaps the most traditional in their career, with Mould- and Stipe-like inflections. Vocals are systematically secondary, at times imperceptible, almost always negligible. Every track lives through its intricate and awkward sonic skeleton.

Far from tempering their experimental ambitions, Today's Active Lifestyles (Merge, 1993) amplifies them: the sound is even more dissonant, anarchic, and chaotic. Navigating this forest of anomalies and irregularities is even more difficult, a concentrated heap of out-of-place sounds. The atonal guitar duels between Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski compete with Arto Lindsay, Jeff Cotton, Lee Ranaldo, and Mayo Thompson alike; and the entirely skewed harmonic structures, with ridiculously syncopated rhythms pushed to the brink of total disintegration—as in Thermal Treasure (start-stop pace, obsessive rhythm, guitar counterpoint ending every verse with four sharp atonal bursts)—are truly relatives of the pantagruelian excesses of Trout Mask Replica. Even the more rock-oriented tracks, like the epic Tilebreaker, overflow with mistakes and fractures. These unpredictable pieces manage to make music out of discontinuity. Melody is hidden among the infinite folds of this hallucination art, flattened to minimize modulation.
Polvo’s “songs” generally follow a three-part configuration: an opening led by guitars that builds a surreal atmosphere through more or less eccentric chords; a rock body containing the main melody; and an instrumental coda indulging in dissonance. The codas are often the most interesting parts, frequently turning into “acid” jams worthy of the
Grateful Dead and Television. Exemplary are Stinger, whose instrumental section not only exudes transcendence but employs an arsenal of minimalism, primitivism, and “metallic” sounds worthy of the avant-garde; and Gemini Cusp, a cosmic raga resembling an Astronomy Domine played on a turntable with a scratched needle and a slowing platter.
The insane component of new wave (Residents) is also present in Polvo’s work, as shown by Lazy Comet, which marries Japan-esque sensual exoticism with hard rock rumbles; the idiotic nursery-rhyme of Sure Shot; the cacophonic gag of Shiska; and the fairground-style tune, cannibalized and distorted, of Time Isn’t On My Side.

The EP Celebrate The New Dark Age (Merge, 1994) abandons the sharpest excesses of the second album in favor of a stronger sense of melody, also benefiting from a newfound “classicality” in their quintessentially anti-classical sound. Thus, on Tragic Carpet Ride, Polvo play power pop, even if they sound like schoolboys imitating their chart idols, producing a chaotic racket, while City Spirit is a dive into the psychedelia of the 1960s, with sweet choruses and transcendent guitar chimes. Fractured is another example of their atonal folk-rock, in the vein of the track that made them famous, Can I Ride: the haphazard guitar jamming substitutes for jingle-jangle (with astonishing results), and all the instruments simply display primitivist impulses, persistent childishness, and puerile whims. Their imitators can profitably study Old Lystra, a spaghetti-western instrumental played in their wild, unorthodox style. The great protagonist of this “spastic” sound is the guitar, almost always played atonal yet simultaneously whipping, producing sounds reminiscent of a crumpled tape. Brylawski now ranks among the great innovators of the instrument, alongside Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay and a few others.

With the third album, Exploded Drawing (Touch & Go, 1996), Polvo offer a monumental work that has the merit of expanding their ambitions beyond the idea of the nonconformist song. The atonal guitar duets of Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski and the ragged rhythms of Steve Popson and Eddie Watkins have become a benchmark for all “lo-fi” rock, but here they attempt to tackle a material that is simultaneously more expansive and more concise. Expansive in the sense that each track develops its theme fully rather than merely sketching it; and concise in the sense that each track presents a macroscopic identity defined around a precise center of gravity. The intermittent trance of Fast Canoe and In This Life, sculpted chord by chord with manic care within a structure that is as melodic as they can make it, is exemplary—melody as a source of spiritual catalysis, not hedonistic escape. The effect amplifies the transcendental component, turning pieces like Bridesmaid Blues into true lysergic psalms. The rock and roll of Feathers Of Forgiveness is dark-toned, industrially paced. With near-heavy-metal fury and insane choruses, Crumbling Down, High-Wire Moves, and The Purple Bear open a path on the border between the territories of Pere Ubu, Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins, and Captain Beefheart. Some slowcore-style ballads (Light Of The Moon), a couple of hyper-depressed singer-songwriter nightmares (Street Knowledge), and a flock of brief, otherworldly instrumentals (Monoloth) prepare the way for the twelve-minute When Will You Die, the apex of this ceremonial levitation of music—a stammering jam on guitars, almost country-tinged, that would delight the decomposing corpse of Jerry Garcia. Everything follows the law of unpredictability and wildest passion. Not that the playful, scruffy approach has been abandoned for a mainstream style, but certainly the touches and chimes of these psychedelic ragas of the 2000s have never been so professional. A reasonably fundamental album, somewhat analogous to the double album that closed the experimental phase and opened the mature phase in Sonic Youth’s career.

The EP This Eclipse (Touch & Go, 1996) continues the progression toward more organized songs and the assimilation of elements of Eastern harmony (both in vocals and guitar tunings). Bombs That Fall From Your Eyes and the instrumental Titletrack join the major repertoire, while Titanup is one of their most accessible songs.

Having enrolled Brian Walsby to replace drummer Eddie Watkins, the band released Shapes (Touch & Go, 1997). On this album Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski adopted the strategy of normalizing their music. Eliminating or reducing tempo shifts and odd tempos, rediscovering melody (albeit in anomalous terms), updating the sound with modern production and sampling techniques, and paying greater attention to orchestration (tambourine, synthesizer, gong, trumpet, sitar, etc.), the raw and unpleasant sound of the past is gradually transforming into a refined rock and roll for intellectuals.
In the end, the result is an album more of “touches of class” than of songs: the powerful hard-rock blasts and metallic samples, as well as the viscerally atonal and demented ending of Enemy Insects (six minutes), the gospel organ and solemn Mexican trumpet of Downtown Dedication (masterfully adapted into a space-rock Hawkwind-style version as D.D.), and so on. The masterpiece of balance is Twenty White Tents, a delicate weaving of atonal chords and assorted little noises, a faint strumming with an oriental flavor, on which a mechanically repeated “hard” riff occasionally appears out of nowhere.
Polvo nevertheless favor a more virile guitar sound, and in that direction they mature with the rocky blues-rock of Rock Post Rock and the neurotic rock and roll of Everything In Flames, where Sonic Youth and the Flaming Lips stage a frightening pow-wow.
Their sonic ideology is summed up in the instrumental epic El Rocio (twelve minutes), all harsh guitar duels and heart-stopping offbeats, sharp dissonances and brutal pauses, without head or tail, as per their best tradition. But perhaps even more damaging in just three minutes is the closing track Lantern, practically their version of a Morricone-style western. The album is embellished by a few short interludes of oriental instrumental music, performed with an arsenal of acoustic instruments.
It is perhaps an overly calculated album, from a duo becoming aware of the scope of their work, drawing unsettling parallels between their career and that of Sonic Youth: both started from bold, indifferent experimentation and built on those improbable foundations a new style of rock song, simultaneously modern and traditional. For Polvo, then, this is their Sister.

Ash Bowie will join Helium and then will release Yesterday And Tomorrow's Shells (Tiget Style, 2000), a lo-fi pop version of Polvo's dischordant rock, credited to the Libraness. The sketches have a homely quality that is reflected in the broad range of styles. Bowie's noisy guitar needs to be anchored to a real band.

Polvo reformed in the late 2000s and released In Prism (Merge, 2009), the first album in 12 years. Right The Relation and Beggar's Bowl were diligent summaries of what made Polvo so influential, but not exactly groundbreaking in 2009. The steely Link in the Chain and the mellow Dream Residue/ Work were intriguing but could not sustain an entire album.

Siberia (2013) is positively embarrassing. Polvo inject poppy vocals in the hard-rocking Total Immersion, whether hoping for broader appeal or to hide the trivial riffing, and then lame poppy ideas keep surfacing throughout the album, sometimes (Light Raking) flanked by loud prog-rock synthesizers and sometimes anchored to granitic soul-rock of the 1970s (Water Wheel, halfway between Free and Rolling Stones) and sometimes simply borrowed from mainstream soft-rock (Some Songs). The most challenging moment is when they indulge in slightly psychedelic and Indian-tinged sounds in Blues Is Loss. Hard to believe that these were revolutionary musicians in the 1990s.