Closer You Are: The Story of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices

This authorized biography of Bob Pollard, the pugnacious singer and songwriter behind the scrappy indie band Guided by Voices, is a blast. Cutter, a musician, describes the life of Pollard, who grew up on the blue-collar side of Dayton, Ohio, in the 1960s and, due to his love of the Beatles, developed a record-buying addiction. Pollard played baseball in high school and at Wright State College before becoming a musician and a lo-fi-recording savant—”marathon affairs accompanied by copious amounts of beer, pot, and coke”—while working as a public school teacher. He formed Guided by Voices in 1983, and the band had its first, inauspicious show in a Dayton bar where Nick Nolte was in attendance. Despite Pollard’s near-maniacal level of productivity and the band’s eagerness to make it (“Lacking a scene, they made their own”), it wasn’t until a 1993 show at CBGB that the band caught fire. Cranking out album after album of esoteric power pop, Guided by Voices became one of the landmark American indie bands of the 1990s. Though Cutter’s attention to detail (especially with regard to gigs and recordings) drags the narrative in spots, he has captured the raucous and squalling voice of a powerful American songwriter. (Aug.)