Out of the lengthy list of Robert Pollard’s Guided By Voices conspirators/collaborators, Tobin Sprout may well be the closest to Pollard himself. Although Sprout is nowhere near as casually prolific as his erstwhile GBV boss—his entire catalog, under his own name, as Eyesinweasel, Fig. 4 and with Pollard as Airport 5, would barely match the Captain’s recorded activities in any four-year segment of his career—he’s also a stunning visual artist and a brilliantly gifted musical provocateur with a penchant for lo-fi magnificence and lysergic flights of lyrical fancy. So while Sprout may put considerably more air between his releases, they’re always worth the wait.
For his sixth solo album, Sprout turns his creative attention to the big human questions of “Where do I fit in the grand scheme of things?” and “Why do things have grand schemes anyway?” The 14-track LP was crafted with primitive sophistication in the seven-year gap since Sprout’s last record, 2010’s The Bluebirds Of Happiness Tried To Land On My Shoulder, a period that included his reunion with GBV’s classic lineup. The Universe And Me lurches to life with the superhero fantasia of “Future Boy Today/Man Of Tomorrow,” the buzzsaw guitars dredging up Sprout’s raw hormonal comic-book memories, a feeling mirrored by “A Walk Across The Human Bridge,” a pinwheeling full-bore dissection of mankind’s de-evolution. These blasts are punctuated by the tremulous vulnerability of the title track and the brittle Beatlesque demo beauty of “Manifest Street,” followed by the GBV-tributes-Crazy-Horse squall of “Honor Guard” and the wistful John Lennon piano reverie of “When I Was A Boy.” The Universe And Me feels like Sprout’s sonic scrapbook and philosophical star chart folded into a single stellar statement.
—Brian Baker
