The air of intellectualism surrounding David Grubbs' music is distancing, yet it's inherent to its appeal, whether he's creating lengthy experimental guitar pieces or packing his dense musical experience and skill into more traditionally structured pop songs. With Gastr Del Sol, a group whose core he shared with Jim O'Rourke, Grubbs struck a deal between his tendency toward wandering weirdness and his desire to tackle more conventional compositions: That band's swan song, 1998's Camoufleur, stands as an amazing synthesis of the avant-garde and the expected.
On his own, Grubbs splits his smarts neatly into halves, alternating his off-road musings with solidly songwriter-ish, post-rock-influenced fare. Case in point (and title): For last year's Off-Road, he paired with avant-garde sax player Mats Gustafsson, coming up with a heady instrumental set filled with unexpected sounds and the occasional fury. The follow-up, A Guess At The Riddle, once again embraces some of pop's rules, and once again subverts them by getting not just smart, but positively brainy. In rock 'n' roll, that can be an obstacle, made worse when it's self-imposed.
But for most of A Guess At The Riddle, Grubbs successfully negotiates the haughtiness of cryptic, poetic lyrics (some penned by his friend Rick Moody) and his own often-bloodless vocal delivery with enough expressive musicianship to breathe life into what might otherwise sound like clinical exercises in songwriting. Oddly, the pieces augmented by electronic duo Matmos ("You'll Never Tame Me," "Hurricane Season") crackle with the most life, as much due to Grubbs' willingness to stretch his singing on those songs as their musical differences. Elsewhere, he backs off the pop idiom into pulsating instrumentals ("Rosie Ruiz," "Coda [Breathing]"), further cracking the wall that has kept his two musical sides from flirting as much as they should. When he finally makes the record that equally matches all of his personalities—traditional songwriter, avowed experimentalist, bookish intellectual, picturesque guitarist—it'll be a wonder. A Guess At The Riddle takes him a step closer, but not all the way there.