Polvo - In Prism

Friends Dave Brylawski (vocalist/guitarist) and Steve Popson (bassist) worked during the late 1980s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to form what would later become of the more important 90's indie rock band's, Polvo. The band released four full length albums between '92 and '97 along with numerous singles and EPs, before disbanding in '98. It was a pleasant surprise that they reformed in the past year and released this album, In Prism, along with an upcoming European tour, which you can read more about at their myspace page.The music is influenced with Eastern and Middle-Eastern musical tints which appear at times in the percussion and guitar. The vocals are sung, while lyrically it can be out there at times. The recording is clean yet the low end packs a punch (see the third song, Beggar's Bowl, for an example). Musically, they fall into the post-punk/progressive rock arena, with a stronger leaning toward the prog-rock end of things on this album, but mostly avoiding the self-indulgence that sometimes plagues the genre. Though the song lengths aren't overly too long, they typically rest around the five and half mark with a couple songs reaching into the eight minute territory.


Polvo - "Right The Relation"

Single guitar layer is followed by second guitar, drums, and bass. Math-rock elements are evident in the writing here, but not overly disjointed or harsh. In fact the guitar parts, broken when they are, work extremely well to accent and add perfect little hooks over the rhythm. The vocals took me a little time to warm up to, but now I think they fit extremely well with the music, sung toward the higher end of things, clear yet powerful. There's a guitar led solo about half-way through the song that doesn't last all that long, before the main instrumental line returns with vocals. The second half of the song mirrors the first mostly, though it ends in a bit of a big finish fashion.


Polvo - "Lucia"

"Lucia" starts off softly, with reverbed guitars, light cymbal taps, and calming vocals. This lasts almost two minutes, before snare hits signal a crashing of drums and guitar, which briefly recedes only to return with the main line and chorus and wonderfully catchy guitar parts that play off of each other and end in cymbal accented crashing closure each time. The Eastern sounding hand played drums lead into an interesting middle portion of the song, that includes multiple instruments (sounds like violin/viola, maybe a sitar as well). Because of this interlude, the return of the chorus is even stronger, and those catchy guitar parts pack even more of a punch this time. The last forty seconds of the song returns to the softness of the beginning, trading in reverb for a clean guitar sound.

When Polvo decided to reunite for this album they also decided to do it on their first label (well in regards to LP releases), Merge Records. They are selling the cd and the flac and mp3 files for download through the Polvo site there. Its always interesting to see how well a band does after years of being apart, and away from each other. Its good to see that Polvo still has a knack for songwriting and avoiding staleness in their sound.