Universe & Me

How do you bring a child's curiosity to life? For Tobin Sprout, formerly of indie rock icons Guided by Voices, the answer is to revisit it with the wounded tenor of an aging piano man; someone searching, desperately, for his place in the cosmos. The Universe and Me is Sprout's sixth solo album; hatched during a seven-year gestation period that included unearthing lost recordings (the single, Future Boy Today/Man of Tomorrow for one, was being saved for GBV), and digging through a treasure chest of memories in his home studio in Michigan, where Sprout composed behind his shambling grand piano and trembling, boyish voice. Each home recording was captured live with Sprout's new band - which led to marvelous imperfections. The Universe and Me takes a deliberately primitive approach that focuses on feeling, as opposed to production. The result is a vague bridge between the ballads of psych-era Beatles, and the haunting vulnerability of Daniel Johnston's Hi, How Are You?. It's no surprise, then, that Sprout penned and illustrated his own magical children's books as The Universe and Me plays like a deceptively dense reimagining of simple subjects like comic books, finding your purpose in life, and growing old.