Jagged, broken and beautiful

Sometimes discovering the brightest musical gems means digging that bit deeper. While the dross is raked over in the faint hope that something shiny and interesting might turn up, some things resting that little bit further below the surface are worth chipping away to find.

One such diamond, only recently uncovered, is Guided By Voices. Quality purveyors of agile, angular pop/rock since 1987, their sound is equal parts Beatles, Captain Beefheart and Big Star. Having led a relatively attention-free existence up until now, songwriter/ frontman Robert Pollard, 41, has signed to Creation Records and recorded one of this year's best rock albums.

Twelve years ago, Pollard, a fourth-grade school teacher and little league sports coach from Dayton, Ohio, decided to write a few songs. Twelve albums and dozens of singles later, many of them financed, produced and distributed by Pollard himself, he and his compadres found themselves in a posh recording studio with ex-Cars frontman turned producer Rik Ocasek.

"This was our first venture into a studio with a big producer," says Pollard. "Rik was great, really laid-back and patient with us. We usually take about a week to do a record and we took six weeks on this. We'd usually just leave the mistakes in - this time we did it until we got the right take."

While the post-grunge, guitar fuzz of such acts as Eve 6 and Matchbox 20 rests comfortably in the higher echelons of the US charts alongside Puff Daddy and TLC, it is perhaps Guided By Voices' simplistic, uncommercial production that has prevented them bending the ear of mainstream audiences to date.

Their development from off-kilter indie strummers to fully- fledged rock guitar heroes is a very deliberate move: "It's a harder, edgier, more rock sound," explains Pollard. "I know some people are disappointed by that because they like our more fragmented, messed up stuff, but Guided By Voices has moved onto another level. It's something I really wanted to do."

Their new record, Do The Collapse, will no doubt draw them out of indie obscurity. As far as "the collapse" goes, Pollard explains: "It's like a dance, except you just fall on the ground. I've demonstrated it on stage when I've had too much to drink. It's also about the notion of what new songs are there? What new dances are there? Everything's been done before and the last thing is the collapse."

Pollard is reticent about his own spectacular body of work, preferring instead to focus on his new record company. "We're label- mates with Oasis - that's pretty funny. I really love Teenage Fanclub, though. I think maybe Oasis should give some props to them."

Do The Collapse is released tomorrow. Guided By Voices play Glasgow Garage on October 24

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