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The Broken Face (Issue #16) Review by Nick Bensen This Guided by Voices-related band features Robert Pollard (vocals), Tim Tobias (guitar) and Todd Tobias (instrumentation, noises and production). In spite of the grim subject matter of this concept album, the overall result is more accessible and less pointedly experimental than the first Circus Devils CD Ringworm Interiors. Bob Pollard usually makes the most of collaborations beyond his main band. The Harold Pig Memorial is certainly no exception, emphasizing the positives from his solo career and recent Guided by Voices, while leaving plenty of room for the Tobias brothers to showcase their musical ideas. The Harold Pig Memorial opens with a delicate plaintive piano melody (reprised at the end of the CD) before the main mournful vocal part of "Alaska To Burning Men" begins. The Tobias brothers set the perfect tension behind Pollard's vocals with a mixture of acoustic and subtle fuzz guitars. "Saved Herself, Shaved Herself" starts out as a quiet ballad and becomes more progressive and dynamic. The cheerful acoustic guitars and tricky percussion of "Soldiers Of June" have the feeling of mid-80s XTC, with a bit of Eastern modality added in. "I Guess I Needed That", "Dirty World News", "Do You Feel Legal?" and "Discussions In the Cave" each recall the tough head-nodding rock of "Hot Freaks" from Bee Thousand in their own ways. There is an unusual combination of sinister and serene atmospheres on tracks such as "Festival Of Death", "May We See The Hostage?" and "Injured?". Stretching for a comparison, it would be fair to say these songs have an effect similar to the! quiet yet dramatic passages from The Wall by Pink Floyd or Berlin by Lou Reed. "Foxhead Delivery", "Bull Spears" and "Vegas" rock really hard and boast great melodies. "Last Punk Standing" seems to consist of two different intertwined songs - one extrapolated from the album's main piano theme and the other a mid-tempo rocker. "Recirculated Hearse", "Pigs Can't Hide" and "Tulip Review" pit Pollard's spoken poetry against intriguing noisy backdrops. "Exoskeleton Motorcade" is the Circus Devils' answer to Rage Against The Machine and, in one short minute, it beats the hell out of the watered-down Rage/Soundgarden hybrid Audio Slave. "The Pilot's Crucifixion/Indian Oil" shows off Bob Pollard's acknowledged early Peter Gabriel influence with dark ambience and elegant dissonance. Splitting the musical duties, with Tim and Todd Tobias concentrating on the instruments and Bob Pollard focusing on the vocals, results in bringing out the most inventive aspects of each. The Harold Pig Memorial succeeds as a concept album and a collection of individual tracks; the songs stand on their own to relieve the somber weight of the whole. I enjoy just about anything these musicians are involved in but this CD strikes me as a particularly strong achievement. ALL MUSIC GUIDE Review CMJ (Issue #110) Review By Franklin Bruno Pollard's enablers this time out are current GBV bassist Tim Tobias on guitar, and brother/producer Todd Tobias (both of Cleveland's underappreciated 4 Coyotes) on everything else. Their interaction on these 22 tracks is both sharp and varied enough to seem distinct from both the "real" band and Pollard's solo material. As for content: The Harold Pig Memorial is allegedly a concept album revolving around a Vegas biker's funeral, but tracking a narrative through these violently compressed lyrics ("You get the dirty world news/Mainly/Daily/Got in on/No/Me") is like reading Finnegan's Wake without a Jesuit education. The MOR-styled "Soldiers of Love" and the tightly wound "Last Punk Standing" stand on their individual merits, but the production of gemlike pop songs isn't the real point here. DUSTED MAGAZINE Review ERASING CLOUDS Review by Dave Heaton (erasing Clouds) Ringworm Interiors,the first album by Circus Devils, was as scary and crazed as its title implies, all fierce noise and hideous secrets. The group, a collaboration between Guided By Voices captain Robert Pollard and the brothers Tobias (GBV bassist Tim and his brother Todd), have followed it up with an album that's more restrained but no less creepy. Where the first album was a noise-rock version of Halloween, on The Harold Pig Memorial the band uses a broader palette. Some of the songs are off-kilter pop-rock in the vein of GBV's odder releases, while others go deeper into Pollard's acid-folk tendencies. Still others push into a haunted version of classic rock, with loud guitars meeting ghostly screams. Yet there's gentle acoustic guitar balladry too, if often in fragments leading into noisy crashes. All of this fits together like a puzzle, leading listeners through a complex but always compelling maze. A concept album of sorts, the album apparently offers the life story of a biker/Vietnam vet. While that story is rarely clear from Pollard's bizarro surrealist lyrics, the album does have an epic sweep to it which makes it feel like a journey. While the nonsequitors and genuinely creepy stretches make Circus Devils' music likely too odd for your average music fan (perhaps even your average GBV fan), this isn't a hapless "side project" but an intricate, intoxicating epic showcasing a unique, hybrid form of rock. LAS VEGAS WEEKLY Review by Jaime Buerger GRADE: B In 1994, after being together for 11 years, low-fi popsters Guided by Voices achieved critical success with the release of "Bee Thousand," and frontman Robert Pollard was catapulted to indie-rock icon. By that time, of course, the Dayton, Ohio, rockers had already developed a strong cult following, but the brief mainstream attention lavished on them resulted in a broader audience searching for an underground alternative to bands like Nirvana. The hyper-prolific Pollard soon began recording on his own, while simultaneously releasing albums with Guided by Voices. Out of Pollard's many musical diversions arose Circus Devils, a band comprised of vocalist Pollard, guitarist Tim Tobias (also a veteran of GBV) and Tobias' brother, Todd, who's credited on "The Harold Pig Memorial" with instrumentation and noises. Whatever Circus Devils may be, it's clearly not a band for the masses. Maybe Pollard's aim is to distinguish himself from his more famous band. (Though the familiar strained vocals coat the Devils' songs, here Pollard sonically assaults you with the ferocity of a raging drunk.) Or maybe he's simply exploring his more psychedelic, trippy side. Either way, "The Harold Pig Memorial" is 44 minutes of ominous sounds-a loosely threaded concept album that deals with death, angels, pleasure and pain as the dead leader of a Vegas motorcycle club (Harold) is mourned by his biker buddies. In short, it's confusing and compelling. Eschewing anything that's akin to the poppy side of GBV, "The Harold Pig Memorial" combines fuzzy guitars, funereal organs, Pollard's quirky humor and Todd Tobias' distorted "noises." Cranked up loud enough, the effect is mind-altering: Imagine attending a wake in the company of your grandparents while struggling through a bad acid trip, and you may start to get the picture. I'd bet that even Hunter S. Thompson-the surrealist of the surreal Las Vegas literateurs-would approve. AQUARIUS RECORDS Review Not surprisingly, the follow-up to the C.D.s' very well-received debut "Ringworm Interiors" has arrived swiftly. Why unsurprisingly? Well, because the man behind this group is none other than the more-than-prolific Robert Pollard. Revealing once again a wonderfully strange and trippy side with shades of Pere Ubu, Pink Floyd and Captain Beefheart, this is much less poppy and more off-kilter, noisy and eccentric. Mr. Pollard and brothers Todd and Tim Tobias take you by tha hand and lead you on their bizarre, psychedelic trek scattered with, among other things, wheezing church organs, watery pianos, and bristly guitars. Listening to Circus Devils can be quite akin to finding yourself in an altered state -chemically or otherwise induced. Sounds and voices are slightly tweaked and distorted, time is skewed, and you'll find these 44 minutes are over all too soon. Recommended. POP MATTERS Review |
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