Friday, June 19, 2009
Creamtastic Thanks for Not Changing, Dudes: New Track From Polvo
Posted by Tracy Moore on Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 1:01 PM
I think we've sufficiently found ways to cream over Polvo here on the Cream, and now's just another reason to keep on creaming, thanks to a new Polvo track posted on Stereogum.
Yes, they are a band from the '90s-core Chapel Hill scene from back in the day. Yes, it's totally college-core to like them. Yes, the vocals were always mixed too low and each song could have been at least five separate songs. Yes, they were repetitive, and yes they were often sloppy and the lyrics could get pretty banal at times. But it was also the sort of beautifully discordant music that you could get lost in, high as a kite or not. And for all its math-rock prowess, it managed to stay heady and visceral at the same time. For all you fashion haters, Polvo looked like just a bunch of regular dudes you'd see playing video games at an arcade.
After 10 years, the band has resigned to Merge to release a new record--it's called In Prism, it's out Sept. 8 and the track "Beggar's Bowl" will appease any old fan looking for a new fix with all the old tricks. I'm not a guitarist--shocker--but what I always loved about Polvo was their devotion to the following things, guitar-wise:
bendy parts
loopy parts
swirly parts
angular parts (yes, angular)
pretty parts
dissonant parts
stabby parts
other-worldly parts
Check it: Polvo - "Beggar's Bowl" (MP3)
Wanna see them live? Take a road trip to Chapel Hill for the XX Merge festival July 22-26 where you can also catch Spoon, Superchunk, Destroyer and the likes of Spent (ah, Spent! Songs of Drinking and Rebellion!).
Comments (15)
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Whoa, Spent are back together. 1996 flashback.
Anyone else attend the Merge 10th anniversary? I was disapointed Ganger couldn't make it, but it was a great 3 days.
Kinda bummed I'm not making the 20th.
that one part sounds like they are about to break out into "another one bites the dust"
as a big polvo lover going back to those mid-90s glory days, i was super excited about this. and, for the most part, sure, it's polvo, but the shreds on it are not very polvo-esque and what's with the super heavy guitars? i always liked that they were wire-y sounding in the past and you could hear more of those weird tunings in the chords... now it's just distortion. tho i do love hearing ash's voice in that context again.
Now can we please have that Archers of Loaf reunion I've been waiting for? Please? I keep worrying that they'll be the only 90s rockers that don't get back together.
An Archers reunion would be well appreciated by this gnome. Hum & Slowdive reunions too.
Picky, picky. They played more than one show, btw. Nashville needs a Hum cover band.
first time i saw polvo was at a "defeat jesse helms" benefit in chapel hill in '96... polvo, superchunk, archers of loaf, capsize 7, and more played... definitely quite the experience for a kid from southern indiana who had never seen any of those bands before... the following night, pavement played a "secret show" at the cat's cradle playing a set of almost entirely new songs from the then-being-recorded brighten the corners album. memmmorrrriiieessss
shit fuck yeah.
bingham: it does sound like they are gonna bust into another one bites the dust, just like you always did at practice.
Oh man, I was at that Helms festival! The one in Durham at the Bulls baseball stadium? That was awesome!
yeah, that was the one! is it just my memory or was that baseball stadium pretty small? like smaller than sounds stadium by a bit? i just remember being on the infield for it... but what a great show and, goddamn, polvo were amazing. right at the dawn of (my still fave of theirs) exploded drawing.
when i first moved up to inglewood, i heard that dave was living in east nashville. pretty badass.
and on a hum note, back in my hometown of evansville, hum's drummer moved to town maybe a decade or so ago and put up an ad looking to play drums around town and when some hum-loving friends contacted him about it, he said he was only interested in playing in a bar-band or cover-band for fun... they were crushed and i thought it was kinda funny.
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