Robert Pollard founded
Guided by Voices in 1985, and while a huge percentage of musicians manage to run dry on inspiration within the space of a decade, over 35 years on, the man is not only still overflowing with ideas for songs, he's still coming up with ideas for bands, too. Yet another side project from
Pollard,
Cub Scout Bowling Pins is founded on a concept that gives it a genuinely individual tone: this band (which shares its personnel with
Guided by Voices circa 2021) takes the traditional
GbV sound, strips away the hard rock and prog influences that give the songs their muscle, and treats the material like pop tunes with a slightly naive, playful undertow. The first full-length album from
Cub Scout Bowling Pins, 2021's
Clang Clang Ho still sounds a great deal like
Guided by Voices (try as he might with his willfully eccentric delivery,
Pollard can't come up with a vocal style that entirely stands apart from his larger body of work), but
Doug Gillard and
Bobby Bare Jr. do tone down their guitar attack, and bassist Mark Shue and drummer
Kevin March give these tracks an easygoing shuffle rather than the heavily muscular backbeat that drove
GbV albums like 2019's
Zeppelin over China and 2020's
Mirrored Aztec. If the results usually feel like
Guided by Voices Lite -- there's no getting past the fact that
Pollard has a very recognizable melodic style, especially when he's working with his usual cast of co-conspirators -- the songs are consistently engaging, and the musicians seem to be having fun approaching this material with a lighter touch. "Sister Slam Dance," though, does sound as if the band desperately wishes they could crank up the amps and give the song the grubby fury for which it cries out. It's commendable that this far into his career,
Robert Pollard has to actively try not to rock, and
Clang Clang Ho suggests he has a valid reason for doing so, though he's better off keeping this a part-time pursuit rather than making this his new priority. ~ Mark Deming