A Little Whirl

Tobin Sprout made a stop in Albuquerque on his latest tour far from the spotlight of Guided By Voices, the band he helped found but which chugs along without him as a cult favorite under the thumb of the prolific and flamboyant Robert Pollard.

Sprout (above left), in his 60s now, resembles a Supreme Court justice* more than he does a rock star. But he  always was the thinking man's counter-point to Bob Pollard's drunken**, needy, microphone-twirling front-man of the various incarnations of GBV who shamelessly plays to fans' craving for nostalgia. I explained to a friend at the show last night that Sprout was either the Lennon to Pollard's McCartney or the McCartney to Pollard's Lennon. Make up your mind, my friend responded, because Lennon and McCartney are pretty different; it can't be both.

Can't it, though? Conventional wisdom considers McCartney the pop alternative to the brooding Lennon, but then how do you square "And Your Bird Can Sing" followed by "For No One" on "Revolver"? No, like the legendary Beatles that Pollard-Sprout warrants a comparison to, the boys from Dayton, Ohio, each showed a broad range of Beatleseque chops, though Sprout was more inclined to wallow in a minor key.***

Last night, Sprout proudly performed for a crowd of about 50 people, backed by bandmates roughly half his age, pushing his latest disc, "The Universe and Me" (his first in seven years). The band seems like it hasn't quite gelled yet. The drummer threw a stick during the first song and the bass player knocked over his own microphone during the second song. The lead guitarist knew his way around the familiar mosquito whine of a mid-'90s GBV song but he occasionally ran too far afield on his own. Sprout's solos were tighter and meatier.

The hour-plus set covered a range of time and melodies. Here's the pleasantly swirling GBV nugget "Jabberstroker":



The problem with Sprout fronting a rock band like this -- besides the comparisons to the arena-rock marathons that Pollard still leads to this day -- is that his music is so much more nuanced and subtle than you would expect to find being performed at a club in downtown Albuquerque on a Wednesday night in August. He is thoughtful and introspective, and his songs have a spider-web intricacy and a wistful tone. That stuff doesn't always blow the doors off a joint.

In fact, Sprout seems ambivalent about his place in the indie-music pantheon. About half of his set consists of his GBV songs and the other half solo material****, but he doesn't make a big deal out of it. The GBV tunes -- from both the classic era of the 1980s and '90s and the current decade's revival -- definitely got a rise out of the fanboys and -girls in attendance. We waltzed to "Awful Bliss," blissed out to the oldie "Gleemer," and pogo'd and shouted along to "It's Like Soul Man." He was a sport about doing requests on the spot, such as "To Remake the Young Flyer," from "Under the Bushes, Under the Stars," his and GBV's apex. A fan's request***** for an Airport 5 song was met with a knowing but dismissive side glance. Here is "Soul Man":



And here's another enthusiastic GBV two-fer, the show-ending "Little Whirl" ("I don't care anymore!") teamed with "A Good Flying Bird" ("Yeah! Yeah!)



Sprout gave the band a break and started his encore set with a chilling reading of a powerful Civil War lament, the beautifully written and haunting "Antietam":



There's always been a sadness to Sprout -- or at least his tunes -- that seemed appropriate at this thinly attended midweek venue in a mid-level city. But he seemed energized by the chance to tour behind his vast catalog and to be a rock star and a front man of a pop juggernaut. He doesn't crave the spotlight but he doesn't feel undeserving of it either.

Footnotes
* - Breyer, specifically.

** - Sprout nursed one Miller Lite throughout the show.

*** - Then again, maybe Sprout, whose output was always dwarfed by Pollard's, was the Harrison to Pollard's Lennon-McCartney. We could go on.

**** - Including such two-minute treats as "All Used Up" and his tribute to Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, "The Last Man Well Known to Kingpin."

*****- OK, that was me making the request. He explained after the show that Bob sang all of the songs from those two turn-of-the-millennium collaborations in which they corresponded by mail, with Tobin providing music tracks and Pollard adding lyrics and vocals, though Tobin admitted having performed "War and Wedding" in the past. 

BONUS TRACKS
Veterans Elf Power opened for Sprout and made workmanlike progress through their XTC-inspired power pop, churning through "Everlasting Scream" for their finale (here live in their hometown of Athens, Ga.):



Airport 5, "War and Wedding":