Polvo

July 11 - July 18, 1 9 9 6 [Off the Record]

*** Polvo

EXPLODED DRAWING

(Touch & Go)

"Don't be ashamed to paint a picture of yourself/You don't have to make it look like anybody else." That tossed-off couplet from the song "In This Life" captures the essence of what's always made this North Carolina-based foursome so appealing. True, guitarists Ash Bowie (who also now plays bass in Helium) and Dave Brylawski have developed one of the better Thurston Moore/Lee Ranaldo-style partnerships around. But there's also something unique about the chemistry that drives this band.

It has a lot to do with the way those guitars and Steve Popson's bass paint Kandinsky-like emotional self-portraits with squiggly lines of melody and jarring splashes of dissonance around the sharp, angular beats that drummer Eddie Watkins lays down with the steady hands of a draftsman. You can hear that happening on "Feather of Forgiveness," where noisy staccato guitar bursts and a seething melodic undercurrent fuse into an artful reflection of the volatile emotions suggested by lyrics like "I want to cover you with flowers of forgiveness/I want to put in a light that hurts your eyes." And you can feel it happening even on a skewed instrumental like "Passive Attack."

-- Matt Ashare

(Polvo play the Middle East with Pipe this Sunday, July 14.)