‘I don’t regret the progress of Guided By Voices. l think it’s good that we were in obscurity for ten years before somebody found out about us,’ Pollard admits, speaking from his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, having just completed a successful East Coast tour of the USA. ’That makes us an established mature band yet a relatively new band in the public eye. We’ve been around as long as bands like Husker Du, REM, and The Replacements but some of those bands have gone over the hump a little bit whereas we're still rising.

Up until Do The Collapse Guided By Voices were a somewhat scattered affair. The band was a rotating roster, while the relationship with their (now former) record company, the hip New York label, Matador Records, was rather relaxed. The current band is a vital group of lo-fi castaways starring Doug Giliard, Greg Demos (The Amps, Breeders) and Jim MacPherson (The Amps). while their move to TVT Records, home to Gil Scott Heron and XTC, signaled a conscious shift relating methods of operation. Plans were put into place, strategies were followed through and a weighty commitment came from all concerned. The band, buoyed by the success of the album and subsequent tours. offers this all as a means to an end. ‘We jumped to a bigger label, and a label with more resources, especially for the radio. l think if you get your songs played on the radio that’s what sells records, but we’re doing our bit too. We’re playing a lot more, we’re touring a lot more than we used too, so I think everyone’s working together so that equals better shows.

Do The Collapse is a marker in terms of a band realizing their ideas. Produced by former Cars Ric Ocasek, who has previously worked with Suicide and Weezer, the album is a dynamic synthesis of striking melodies, delicious guitar distortion and surreal lyricism. After repeat doses one is pleasantly addicted. It certainly deserves more than a cursory audition. Tracks like Optical Hopscotch, Wormhole and Strumpet Eye offer backroads to Pollards strange, animated landscape, while Hold on Hope and Dragons Awake, are well produced ‘heart on your sleeve’ rockers. Pollard recognizes the differences from the bands previous work and offers why the response has been so positive.’ We spent a lot of money, it was recorded by Ric Ocasek and it sounds a lot better he says, matter of factly 'They’re different, they’re more fleshed out. I took more time on them and I know they rock harder. In my opinion they’re better’

The new album, however has provoked a mixed reaction. Q Magazine rated it five stars, while Britain's NME called it ‘genius’. Fanzines, the long time fan base of Guided By Voices, and voice of the underground, haven’t been so kind. It’s intent for artistic grandeur - to sound bigger and fuller - has confused listeners and critics. Ironically for a band adored for their lo-fi sound, Do The Collapse is the direction the band, and especially Pollard has always aimed for. He is quick to shut down the dissention coming from certain quarters.

‘We're just doing our own thing: is the response. ‘We’ve always been about guitar rock. There are a lot of people who the reasons they loved Guided By Voices are because we were a lo-fi band. Most of the people that truly love Guided By Voices is because of the songs and so they’re still there, but there are some people calling us some sort of a sellout but I disagree totally, we’re still pure rock. It’s like even when we did the lo-fi stuff we’d set up Marshalls and stuff in the basement and try to get the best sound we could, it just happened that we didn’t know what we were doing. So now we’ve finally got to the point where we have enough respect from other people in the industry and people I respect, that they’re willing to work with us and get a better sound. For someone to be disappointed with that I don’t understand, you’d think they would be happy for us.