Volo Volo by Poi Dog Pondering

Volo Volo, Poi Dog Pondering's 1992 album for Columbia, was the second full-length the sprawling Austin collective made for the label, and its title is supposedly Swahili for "revolver". Frank Orrall's crew built these songs from the floor up, laying down the rhythms first and stacking everything else on top of the drum patterns, and it shows: the scruffy acoustic busker charm of the early records gives way to something tighter and more groove-driven, Susan Voelz's violin and Ted Cho's guitar riding a worldbeat pulse. Alan Winstanley and Clive Langer produced about half of it, with Jerry Harrison also pitching in, and one critic even caught whiffs of the Smiths and the Waterboys.

It didn't sell. With only 50,000 copies moved by the fall of 1993, Columbia cut the band loose, and several members packed up and left Austin for Chicago to start over.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.