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TOBIN SPROUT
STILL GUIDED BY VOICES



During a decade spent playing the quiet but crucial part of George Harrison to Bob Pollard’s John Lennon and Paul McCartney in Guided by Voices — or, if you like, John Entwistle to Pollard’s Townshend/Daltrey axis — singer/guitarist Tobin Sprout wrote or co-wrote some of the band’s loveliest hymns to awful bliss, young flyers, and 14 cheerleader cold fronts. In the eight years since his departure as a full-time member of Dayton’s favorite lo-fi flag wavers and subsequent move to Michigan for family reasons, he’s been almost as busy as he ever, as improbable as that might sound given his old employer’s obsessive-compulsive work ethic.

Although his most recent album, Lost Planets & Phantom Voices (Luna, 2003), is Sprout’s first full-length solo effort in almost four years, he’s issued a handful of solo and collaborative LPs and EPs (including a live album with his post-GBV band, Eyesinweasel, that was recorded at a Middle East upstairs show). He’s launched a new studio project called Airport 5 with his old pal Pollard. What’s more, he has an alter ego as a photorealist painter whose work reflects his detailed, miniaturist impulses as a songwriter.

Along with his own two-week tour, Sprout’s concise 70-minute headlining set at T.T. the Bear’s a week ago Wednesday, as part of the Boston pop foursome the Fly Seville’s April residency at the club (which concludes this Wednesday), provided a sparkling study of pop economy and the perennial joys of a perfect chorus. Backed by a capable but previously unknown quartet of dudes from Milwaukee (three of whom had toiled in the unfortunately named mid-’90s outfit Front of Truck), Sprout sped through two dozen tunes, accommodating as many requests as he could hear, or remember. The set list was a shambles 10 minutes into the program. It felt just like the old days.

The opener, "Get Out of My Throat," the lost-45 garage nugget "It’s Like Soul Man," and a chiming "The Last Man Well Known to Kingpin" were taut, self-contained bursts of pleasure propelled by the rhythm section of brothers Steve (bass) and Gary (drums) Vermillion. Guitarists Randy Diderrich and Mason Brown added muscle and depth (there were usually three electric guitars on stage at any given time), and that threw Sprout’s more winsome offerings — a tender "Ester’s Day"; the minimalist "Gas Daddy Gas" — into sharp, gorgeous relief.

BY JONATHAN PERRY

Issue Date: April 23 - 29, 2004
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