Drawing used for Harman-Ising MGM cartoon short The Pups' Picnic, 1936 (from Michael Sporn's Splog)
Some people make me sick. They have so many talents that my own paucity of natural gifts seems even more meager by comparison. Leland, Michigan's Tobin Sprout is one such individual - he's an artist with an impressive talent for photorealism, and he has recently published his first children's book, Elliott, which is available from Mackinac Island Press. As if that wasn't enough, Tobin Sprout is also one of my favorite songwriters, although he hasn't released any new music in several years. Sprout was a member of Guided By Voices during their "classic line-up" period, and he released five albums of great lo-fi guitar pop after leaving the band. I'd like to see him get back to making music, but he may be getting busier with his kids' books - the latest news is that the initial run of Elliott sold out pretty quick, and now New York publishers are in a bidding war over the rights to the book and a set of Elliott chapter books Sprout is working on. I'm happy for him, though - I love my copy of Elliott, and children's lit seems to be an area that allows him to use his talents as a writer and illustrator in combination.
If his writing and painting was unsuccessful, though, maybe Sprout would go back to making music. He was once a fairly prolific songwriter (although he could never hope to keep up with bandmate Robert Pollard), and I liked almost everything he ever released. Sprout has a knack for combining the trebly guitar hooks of lo-fi indie-pop with Syd-Barrett-style psychedelia, and some of his best songs are very hard to find these days. "High Rise" is a great song, and it was only ever available on the vinyl version of Sprout's Demos & Outtakes collection. It has the classic Tobin drum machine sound, with a single guitar and melody. But I like the lyric a lot, and the chorus of "Doin' the high rise/Doin' the high rise/Doin' the high rise/Yeah!" always makes me wonder what a dance called the High Rise would look like.
"High Rise" by Tobin Sprout
2 comments:
Thanks for posting this song. I've been wanting to hear it for a long time. It's actually a cover of one of my favorite Tall Dwarfs songs, written by Alec Bathgate.
Cheers.
I never knew that was a Tall Dwarfs cover. I knew the Tall Dwarfs had a song called "Highrise", but I've never heard it (The 3 EPs collection is long out of print, I think).
Thanks for that info!
Post a Comment