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| AMAZON.COM Cleveland's
Doug Gillard has been a rock band puzzle piece since the 1980s.
He co-starred as the obscure sideman in bands Death of Samantha
and Cobra Verde and, for the last eight years, has served as Robert
Pollard's right-hand-axe-man (and writer of the acclaimed "I
Am a Tree") in Guided By Voices. As GBV calls it quits, Gillard
finally takes a crack at manning the whole puzzle with his solo
debut, a hook-bejeweled passage into three decades (sixties through
eighties) of pop-influenced songwriting and allusions to the Zombies,
the Kinks, Nick Drake, Dwight Twilley, the dB's and Urge Overkill.
Promoting a variation from Pollard's spit-shined power-pop for a
more pensive display, the gifted Gillard plays all instruments (guitar,
bass, drums, piano and percussion) save for drummer Jon Wurster's
(Superchunk) three-song accompaniment, and his unrefined self-production
juxtaposes his own complex guitar solos and piano breaks with the
record's melodically gorgeous tone. |
