In a Class of Its Own: Polvo

IN THE LATE 1980s, around the time many began wondering what "alternative" was supposed to be an alternative to, Polvo was an alternative to everything.

Polvo's sound, which included de-tuned sitars, banjos played with distortion and shimmering, atonal rock-anthem riffs, forced critics to lob a lot of language their way. "For the uninitiated," wrote the Toronto Sun, "Polvo sound like a Middle Eastern folk band playing car chase music on fuzzy guitars."

Maybe so, but it was this eccentricity that resonated in the most obscure caverns of the post-punk underground; cutting seven recordings in as many years — and never selling more than a few thousand each, if that — Polvo modestly wrote rock history on a bare-bones arsenal of squawking Sears & Roebuck six-strings and schizoid time signatures.

By 1993, singer-songwriter Ash Bowie, who went on to join Helium, and guitarist Dave Brylawski, now of Black Taj (as is founding Polvo bassist Steve Popson), had cultivated a predilection for the epically ambitious: elliptical, mathematically precise yet ranging compositions of baroque complexity.

Disbanded since '97, they were recently invited to play All Tomorrow's Parties, curated by Explosions in the Sky.

"We'd been asked to reunite a couple of times, like at Merge or Touch-and-Go's anniversaries," says Brylawski, "but this really hadn't been on our radar, and all of a sudden it just clicked."

But only in a manner of speaking. Ex-Cherry Valence member Brian Quast is standing in for founding Polvo drummer Eddie Watkins. So don't call it a reunion.

"That was one of our first decisions," says Brylawski. "We'll play old songs, but we're going to approach them as if they're new to us.

» Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW; with Sir Arthur and His Royal Knights and The Oranges Band, 9 p.m., $13; 800-551-7328. (U St.-Cardozo)

Written by Express contributor Pete Cobus

Photo courtesy Merge Records