CIRCUS DEVILS - When Machines Attack

In the sprawling galaxy of Pollard offshoots, Circus Devils have always been — programmatically — a world apart. Founded in 2001 at the singer's initiative, backed for the occasion by his trusted brothers Tim and Todd Tobias, the band was meant, by design, to serve as the main outlet and the most radical aesthetic departure from the standards of his flagship project. Not just another side concern among many, then, but a musical creature with a life of its own, to which the most eccentric and in many ways extreme impulses of his roster of musicians could be exclusively entrusted. Twelve years of activity, seasoned with just as many full-length releases, confirm the importance old Bob has placed on this particular collaboration, an ideal showcase for the surplus of weirdness that the seasoned rogue of American indie-rock has never lacked. Evidently still far from satisfied, at the end of October the group released two albums of new material on the very same day, fraternal twin records united by a strong conceptual bent: one built on rigorously warped dreamy atmospheres, the barely passable "My Mind Has Seen The White Trick"; the other, conceived as a mad nightmare, is the one we're here to discuss.

Bookended by a pair of pitch-black spoken-word pieces acting as a framing device (one that's actually pretty unconvincing), "When Machines Attack" seeks open confrontation with the listener right from the indigestible refrain of "You're Not A Police Car", a track it would be an understatement to call convoluted or needlessly overburdened. There's no clarity here. Or rather, there's far too much of it, and what prevails is a calculated manner that reeks of unmistakable mockery. Murky, brooding sounds, mostly acoustic, dress up songwriting deliberately kept in an embryonic state, a hodgepodge of cheap effects assembled without so much as a shred of conviction. We're essentially in the presence of the most spaced-out and moody Pollard, introverted, gratuitous and brutalized to the point of parody in his crude formal short-circuits. Across an extended, as unexpected as it is sinister minimalist stretch, grumbles, ticking noises, alienating background clutter, grotesque samples and drunken vocals ('Blood Dummies') follow one another without pause, discarded wallpaper, riff stubs paired with sloppy tribalisms and juvenile posturing that veer into the ridiculous, with no telling how much of it is unintentional ('Craftwork Man'). A parade of creations that are nothing short of disjointed, a genuine gallery of toothless horrors in pure Pollard style, a dadaesque pastiche devoid of the slightest artistic dignity.

The refusal of any kind of expressive accommodation, coupled with the demand for unconditional devotion to the American songwriter's capricious musings — especially in scenarios this catatonic and indecipherable — ends up wearing down even the most patient of the unfortunate curious listeners before long. Across a collection of nineteen tracks, there's always the odd interesting idea to be found. The docile yet disturbed chamber-music leanings of "We're Going Inside The Head (Of A Winner)", for instance, suddenly struck down on the road to Dayton; or the barrage of percussion and white-hot fuzz that, in "Idiot Tree", backs one of the few sensible vocal numbers in the bunch; or even the acrid, threatening, uneven sketch of "Johhny Dart". Lukewarm scraps of their author's ragged inspiration, here blunted more than ever. Flashes of his surging streak can be felt just in the title track, which, of his best qualities, mostly replicates the schematics, a static, bare-bones structure that plays as an open act of disruption. The impression is that of a car wreck with a mangled body, no tires left to speed on and not a drop of gas left: the cover artwork — perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not — thus emerges as by far the most honest detail of the entire record.

Not even one of the typical sun-scorched electroacoustic miniatures that fill out the Guided By Voices back catalogue (“Wizard Hat Lost In The Stars”) is enough to salvage such a graceless, ill-fated album. What prevails here is a pretentiousness that goes well beyond tolerable limits, where even the poetics of fragmentary collage seems to abandon its enthusiastic vitality from the outset, reducing itself to an empty, pandering exercise in style that's unsettling and even a little sad. As for hallucinated symbolism and noisy detours, we remain firmly in business-as-usual territory, animated by an unease that never feels remotely plausible. In the less apocalyptic moments (so to speak), especially in the closing tracks, one feels, in a sense, reassured. Never impressed, though. Not even within the narcotic folds of “The Horrified Flower”, a passage entirely out of place in a collection as ostentatiously naive as “When Machines Attack”, but which, conversely, serves as a decent reminder of the enchanting faculties of a more inspired Pollard. One who, however, doesn't live in this abrasive album, lit up (intermittently) only by the opportunistic dynamism of its excesses. Good ideas are passed over in favor of a string of provocations of dubious effectiveness, and the whole thing amounts to little more than a damp squib.

Old Bob's worst record of 2013, tied with the dismal debut by the inessential Teenage Guitar.

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18/01/2014