Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2010 > November > 03 > Entry
Fun Fun Fun Fest preview: Polvo
Is there a better rock ‘n’ roll name than Ash Bowie? I think not. It is a tree, it is the remnants of fire, it is a knife, it is three syllables of awesome. Well, maybe not the knife, if you lived in Ash’s house growing up.
“The rest of my family pronounced it Boo-ee, my dad said Bow-ee,” Bowie says over the phone. The cell signal is terrible, so his voice wows and flutters, sometimes cutting out, sometimes roaring to life, a bit like his band Polvo’s complicated riff-logic. On excellent, underrated albums such as “Today’s Active Lifestyles” and “Exploded Drawing,” Polvo’s songs felt like classic rock as played by Martians who knew how it was supposed to sound, but had too many fingers for simple chords.
The last time Polvo was an active, touring rock band, Bill Clinton was in office, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal had just broken. The band’s 1997 album, “Shapes” was a controversial one among fans of the band’s knotty rock. The sound of Bowie and guitarist Dave Brylawski locking up and spinning out while bassist Steve Popson holds down the fort is, for some 30- and 40-something rock nerds, as crucial to the notion of 1990s Southern underground as Superchunk’s catchy punk and the fuzzy psychedelia of Neutral Milk Hotel.
“Shapes” was more openly progressive than this already somewhat obtuse act’s earlier records. Some people loved it, some hated it, but after a brief tour it was time to hang it up.
“‘Shapes’ was pretty piecemeal,” Bowie says. “Our drummer (Polvo’s original stickman Eddie Watkins) had quit the band. His replacement (Carolina punk lifer Brian Walsby) did a really good job and I played drums on a few, which wasn’t a great idea. We just didn’t really know what we were going to come out with.” The band called in a day in February 1998 and everyone went on with his life. Bowie became an electrician and still played now and then.
“I really never got around to finishing anything,” Bowie says. “I didn’t really miss putting out product and stuff like that.”
(The cell connection is so bad I swear he says “I became an obstetrician,” an idea he cracks up at: “No, electrician,” he laughs. “I work in attics and crawlspaces” — the reader may make his own joke here.)
In 2008, Polvo reformed with new drummer Brian Quast, after being invited to appear at All Tomorrow’s Parties by Texas epic rockers Explosions in the Sky.
“We started by trying to figure out what old songs we like enough to play, then changing them a bit,” Bowie says. “We had some new material and making a record was a pretty logical progression.”
Released in September 2009, “In Prism” fared far better, aesthetically, than “Shapes.” The songs are livelier, but still complicated. It’s the sort of album that has even casual fans reaching for the back catalog seeing what they missed the first time around.
“We practiced a lot and worked on the material more than we ever had before,” Bowie says (which makes sense as they weren’t out testing new songs live). “The focus became how to make the material stronger.”
These days, the reformed band is getting to play places they never reached the first time around. “It’s been a blast,” Bowie says, “and we try to make the most of it. Just getting to place places like Poland and Italy and Spain and Finland is fantastic.”
No, Austin is not as cool as any of those places. But there are a lot of us who are thrilled to hear those weird chords again.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | | Categories: Fun Fun Fun Fest
