Polvo - Biography
Polvo, the most psychedelic of math rock bands, practice common themes of the genre like angular instrumental interplay and drastic shifts in time signature, but their trademark sound focuses most sharply on outrageous guitar texture. Guitarists Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski specialize in guitar tones and effects that are both unique and truly cracked, sounding as fresh and weird today as they did when the band was first active in the 1990s. By incorporating elements of psychedelic music, traditional Eastern music, and noise, and adopting a looser approach that eschewed the rigid vibe of many other bands lumped under the math rock label, Polvo’s sound has aged very well.
The band came together in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in 1990 while most of the members were studying at the University of North Carolina. Bonding over post-punk and Asian music, guitarists Bowie and Brylawski, bassist Steve Popson, and drummer Eddie Watkins immediately found a unique sound. Now often hailed as the fathers of math rock, the band loudly repudiates the claim. Popson laughingly says, “… people were saying things about how Polvo were the founders of math rock, and I think that’s insulting to people who play really good math rock. We never thought of it like that.” Indeed, Polvo never seemed to strive for the technical perfection of bands like Don Caballero or Breadwinner, instead preferring an approach that was both more textural and more melodic.
Polvo’s first release was a double 7” called Can I Ride, which was released in 1990 on the band’s own Kitchen Puff label but was later released on CD as Polvo in 1995 on Jesus Christ Records. The 7” immediately lays the groundwork for Polvo’s early sound with a post-punk influenced approach featuring interlocking and dissonant guitar melodies, waves of textural noise, and driving rhythms. Founder of Chapel Hill’s Merge Records, Mac McCaughan (also a high school classmate of Brylawski and Popson), signed the band for their debut full-length, Cor-Crane Secret (Merge). Released in 1992, Cor-Crane Secret dives head first into Polvo’s distinctive sound world. Ramping up the dissonance with alternate guitar tunings and slurred vocals, the songs still manage to wield some serious hooks. Songs like “Vibracobra” and “Channel Changer” are both sonically adventurous and melodically memorable — a juxtaposition that Polvo would always enjoy.
Things continued to get weirder on the band’s second and arguably best release, Today’s Active Lifestyles (Merge), which was released in 1993. Some of the more straightforward post-punk melodicism of the debut album is eclipsed on Today’s Active Lifestyles by amazingly intricate guitar work, totally warped arrangements, and odd rhythmic time shifts. The guitar interplay in particular on this record is incredible and deserves to be canonized alongside the work of bands like Television and Sonic Youth. The stylistic success of the album is in part due to Bowie and Brylawski’s growing fascination with Eastern music and its modalities. The protracted intro to “Thermal Treasure” gives way to explosive drum bombast before settling into a fractured groove that sounds like This Heat playing ancient Chinese royal court music. The single “Tilebreaker” overflows with inventive guitar parts, woozily colliding into each other to form spidery meshes that seem impossibly tangled. The album closer “Gemini Cusp” is possibly the definitive Polvo song, complete with a beat that sounds like it’s going to collapse at any moment, a semi-spoken vocal melody, and reeling slack-strung guitars that are constantly morphing into new shapes.
The next two years brought an EP each with 1994’s Celebrate The New Dark Age (Merge) and 1995’s This Eclipse (Merge). The former release remains a favorite among fans and stands as some of Polvo’s best music. Reincorporating a strong melodic element, especially in the more confident vocal delivery, songs like “Solitary Set” and “Every Holy Shroud” deliver the hooks while maintaining those exploratory, warped guitar textures. This Eclipse was the band’s last release for Merge for the 1990s. Later in 1995, Polvo signed with the larger indie label Touch and Go. The band’s debut for the label was a double-length behemoth called Exploded Drawing (Touch and Go), released in 1996. Polvo’s best-known record, Exploded Drawing merges the band’s fractured, psychedelic post-punk aesthetic with influences from classic prog-rock and a heavier Eastern tinge. Immediately noticeable are the slightly more traditional song structures and the abundance of catchy hooks, all recorded with a new clarity and with quite a few songs featuring singsong choruses. Songs like “Fast Canoe” and “In This Life” actually have the potential to be proper singles and the band never wrote anything as hummable as the central chord progression in “Feather Of Forgiveness.”
Founding drummer Eddie Watkins left the band after Exploded Drawing to concentrate on his family and was replaced by Brian Walsby. Polvo was beginning to spread out in general, with Brylawski moving to New York to study with Asian musicians and Bowie moving to Boston to play bass in Helium (the band led by his girlfriend Mary Timony). Polvo recorded one final album, Shapes (1997 Touch and Go) — the band’s only dud, before separating in 1998.
Bowie went on to released solo work under the name Libraness for the Tiger Style label in 2000. Brylawski plaid with Idyll Swords and currently plays with The Black Taj along with Popson. In 2008, Polvo reunited to perform at the request of My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. The enthusiasm expressed at the reunion inspired the band (and their new drummer Brian Quast) to book a new tour and re-sign with Merge. In 2009, they released In Prism (Merge).