Polvo Calls It Quits After Eight Years Of Controlled Chaos

The Chapel Hill, N.C., quartet played San Francisco's Great American Music Hall on Friday to a sell-out crowd hissing with the knowledge -- freshly dredged out of the underground catacombs of the indie-music scene -- that this would be one of the band's last shows ever.

"It's just been difficult, we don't live in the same place anymore," the Boston-based frontman Ash Bowie said, speaking before the show about the impending breakup. "It's difficult to get the material together. It just gets to a point where you figure, 'Hey, we don't have to do this.' "

Spearheaded by frontmen/guitarists Bowie and Dave Brylawski and best-known for exploring the boundaries of rock 'n' roll within the confines of the Indian sitar and a guitar, Polvo released four albums in eight years -- including Cor-Crane Secret, Today's Active Lifestyles and their most recent, 1997's Shapes -- as well as several EPs, first with Superchunk's MERGE label and most recently with Touch and Go Records.

Word that the band was going to break up after the show proved to be partly true that night and may have prompted the sell-out, leaving many ticketless fans outside looking to hustle their way into the show. According to Bowie, the final gig for the foursome will actually be Feb. 7 in the band's former hometown of Chapel Hill.

Rob Sieracki, in the publicity department of Polvo's Touch and Go label, cited the different hometowns of the musicians as the main reason for the disbanding, with members now living in Boston and New York as well as Chapel Hill. He said that he did not know of any additional projects planned by current members of the band, which is perhaps best-known by loyal fans for the tune "Feather of Forgiveness," off the group's double-CD Exploded Drawing.

Saying that he does not plan on spending any additional time with his side project Helium, Bowie added that he doesn't intend to start any new bands at this juncture.

And despite the questions left unanswered about bandmembers, the significance of this show was not lost on 25-year-old Michael Leece of San Luis Obispo, Calif. "Seeing them now is fundamental for me. They're a band before their time," Leece said. "People will look back on them later and realize they were hugely influential."

Friday's show kicked off slowly, with Polvo following hot on the heels of the fiercely atonal local act Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. Fans filled the dance floor and leaned over the balconies as the band launched into "Enemy Insects" (RealAudio excerpt) off of their latest and now final record, Shapes. Those familiar with the long breaks between lyrics in Polvo's songs got into the groove and let the words surface as they do.

Others seemed a bit confused by the tunes that don't suggest a mosh and aren't exactly made for a sing-along.

It wasn't until the end of Polvo's set that their brand of cultivated chaos started getting out of hand. Normally the quartet keeps the madness built in, with lurching rhythms and meandering melodies that fans have come to crave. But this time, over the course of the rambling rhythms of "d.d. (s.r.)" (RealAudio excerpt), the quartet began personifying the delightful disorder that marks their tunes and the crowd came to life.

But all did not go smoothly that night. Brylawski grappled with a broken string and Bowie's guitar slipped after the strap mysteriously worked its way loose from its moorings. A fan in the crowd lobbed a cab driver's cap into drummer Brian Walsby's kit. And bass man Steve Popson, perhaps feeling left out but maybe just trying to clear the deck, picked up the hat and put it on his head.

The band loosened up after that, the guitarists relaxing their intense gazes at their footwear and drummer Walsby picking up the pace. Brylawski, sporting a bright red T-shirt with the words Dip's Country Kitchen emblazoned across the front, issued a dedication that generated a ripple of laughter from the politically savvy crowd: "I'd like to dedicate this song to 3Com Park, another old stadium gone," a sly comment on San Francisco's renamed Candlestick Park, which will soon be vacated when the Giants move into a new, downtown ballpark.

A couple of rollicking numbers later and the band -- like the sports stadium -- was on its way into an uncertain future. [Tues., Jan. 27, 1998, 9 a.m. PST]