Performer Notes

Personnel: Tobin Sprout (vocals, guitar, bass, drums, piano, organ, Casio, tambourine); Jim Eno, John Peterson, Billy Mason, Joe Buben, Kevin Fennell (drums).
Engineers include: Gary King, John Shough, John Croslin.
All tracks have been digitally mastered using HDCD technology.
Personnel: Tobin Sprout (vocals, guitar, piano, organ, keyboards, drums); Joe Buben, John Peterson, Kevin Fennell, Billy Mason (drums).
Audio Mixers: Gary King; John Shough.
Recording information: Basement; Cro-Magnon Studio; Refraze Studio.
Photographer: Laura Sprout.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Tobin Sprout; Todd Robinson.
While Robert Pollard and his new lineup of Guided By Voices drift toward both high-fidelity and rock, Tobin Sprout, who served as Pollard's sometime pop foil on GBV's best records, sticks almost religiously to his lo-fi, pop upbringing. His pop iconoclasm, which is ground in even deeper on his second solo album with an abundance of pianos and ballads, is the kind of intensely personal choice for which we've always loved Sprout. The chance of finding a huge audience of lo-fi fans who also happen to love clean, wistful pop songs is about the same as the chance of finding 10 million dB's fans. In other words, if you love these songs as much as we do, they're guaranteed to be your own private pop treasures.
These are well produced home recordings, but home recordings nonetheless; full of strummed electric guitars, spare and simple beats and splashes of intermediate piano playing that suggest a major pop band's demos. Sprout's songs remain as oblique and intensely catchy as ever. Pretty ballads like "Angels Hang Their Socks On The Moon" run up against jangly electric singalong rock tunes like "All Used Up" at a rate that's nearly dizzying.

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (9/4/97, p.70) - 3.5 Stars (out of 5) - "...Sprout unleashes his inner McCartney....are driven by strummed guitars, wistful melodies and stately minor-key chord changes..."

Entertainment Weekly (8/22-8/29/97, p.134) - "...showcases the Guided by Voices guitarist's talents as a deft pop stylist imbued with a more traditional les surreal vision than that of GbV main man Bob Pollard..."

- Rating: B+

Magnet (p.76) - "[A] fully realized pop album of guitar-driven rockers and piano-based ballads."

Magnet (11-12/97, p.76) - "...Heavy on majestic ballads, many of them piano-based, Sprout continues to rely on the repetition of lyrics and riffs to fill in the material's gaps while simultaneously raising the consistency and sweetness levels..."

Option (11-12/97, p.118) - "...a solid pop songwriter, taking cues from the usual suspects--the Beatles, T-Rex--and infusing them with a warm, unassuming nature....Sprout isn't stretching any barriers here, but by perfecting his own style of modest, personal pop, he doesn't need to."

Album: Moonflower Plastic (Welcome to My Wigwam)
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Get Out of My Throat
2)	Moonflower Plastic (You're Here)
3)	Paper Cut
4)	Beast of Souls
5)	Little Odd, A
6)	Angels Hang Their Socks on the Moon
7)	All Used Up
8)	Since I...
9)	Back Chorus
10)	Curious Things
11)	Exit Planes
12)	Little Bit of Dread
13)	Hit Junky Dives
14)	Water on the Boaters Back

Album: Moonflower Plastic (Welcome to My Wigwam)
#	Song Title	Time
1)	Get Out of My Throat
2)	Moonflower Plastic (You're Here)
3)	Paper Cut
4)	Beast of Souls
5)	Little Odd, A
6)	Angels Hang Their Socks on the Moon
7)	All Used Up
8)	Since I...
9)	Back Chorus
10)	Curious Things
11)	Exit Planes
12)	Little Bit of Dread
13)	Hit Junky Dives
14)	Water on the Boaters Back