Fact: When Tobin Sprout left Guided by Voices, he took the band's heart with him. Consider how often you listen to anything post-Under the Bushes these days, if you doubt it. With Toby in the ranks, GBV had that semblance of balance necessary in all great bands, Sprout's quick interjections of bashfulness standing out like a cardigan in a biker bar amidst Robert Pollard's boozy leg-kicks. When the guitarist dropped out of the Ohio fantasy rock camp and moved to Michigan, Pollard booted the rest of his Dayton lineup, signed up "real" musicians, and promptly drove the GBV franchise into a tree.
Meanwhile, Sprout, off in his own orbit and presumably concentrating more on his photo-realistic paintings, never stopped recording. After his odds-and-ends debut Carnival Boy pulled a surprising upset over the simultaneously released Pollard-wank Not in My Airforce, Tobin spun a bunch of lonely basement nights into the drearily touching Moonflower Plastic, before being punted by Matador.
Alas, from there on out the returns have been of the diminishing sort, first taking the one-man act thing too far with the disappointing Let's Welcome the Circus People, then falling way short of olden days with his own band, Eyesinweasel. Even postally collaborating with his old drinking pal Pollard via their Airport 5 project yielded disappointment, uncomfortably welding as it did Sprout's unassuming music to Uncle Bob's blustery vocals.
So I was just about running empty on enthusiasm for Tobin Sprout, but thought I'd give Lost Planets, Phantom Voices a try, for old time's sake. Pleasingly, within I found a handful of tracks stronger than anything he's produced since Moonflower Plastic-- "Cleansing from the Storm" a reminder of Sprout's ability to pen an anthem that nervously toes the ground rather than swaggers, "Catch the Sun" (ft. Jim MacPherson) a reminder how much better Sprout sounded when he turned elsewhere for the drumming. Sprout even turns in his twee ID for a lower-register warble on "As Lovely as You" that sounds, dare I say, Interpol-ish! (Oh, take me now, Lord.)
But the majority of Lost Planets merely parades out more examples of the weaknesses in Sprout's solo catalog, first and foremost being his studio solitude. Toby, my man, I don't know how to break this to you, but you're not the greatest musician technically. Which is fine! It's fine... but in light of that, the goin'-it-alone thing just ain't working. Much of Lost Planets is marred by a kind-of midtempo sameness ("Rub Your Buddha Tummy", "Indian Ink"), most likely due to your intermediate drumming skills.
Sprout's mid-fi recording techniques are the other major problem with his recent work, up to and including Lost Planets; the sound amplifies his technical limitations by adding little in the way of sonic character. Given Tobin's thin voice, a mix that's heavy on the upper frequencies can cause acute trebleitis, "Let Go of My Beautiful Balloon" and "Earth Links" sounding particularly washed out without a low-end anchor. Awkwardly formulaic instrumentals don't help matters, either, be it the cookie-cutter surf of "Martini" or the keyboard waltz of "Fortunes Theme No. 1" (leave it to the French, Toby).
But more than anything, it's just distressing to see Sprout evolving on a parallel course with Pollard, both of them forgetting that unrehearsed energy and verse/chorus/get-the-fuck-out structures were what got them into our record collections in the first place. It's also starting to become abundantly clear that Sprout is better enjoyed as a side dish than as a main course, his first couple albums notwithstanding. It's almost certainly too late to be holding out hope that Tobin will one day reassume his position at the right hand of King Pollard's throne, but maybe, just maybe, there's a prolific schoolteacher in northern Michigan with a four-track and a drinking problem we could set him up with?
