Please Freeze Me

As much as I love the full-blown majesty of Guided by Voices when the band was firing on all cylinders, I'm just as captivated (and occasionally more so) by Robert Pollard with an acoustic guitar in his lap. "Please Freeze Me" is a little gem of a song that was apparently cut for Bee Thousand (the fourth version, according to the GBV Database), and is among the few so labeled that didn't make the expanded "Director's Cut" reissue of that album).

I'd argue that it deserved a place on the album proper. It's better than some of the songs on the latter half of that record, and its 1:17 runtime wouldn't overburden the album's 36:30 total. Regardless, it would have fit well, a very strong melody, a good Pollard vocal and little enough fidelity that it wouldn't stick out unduly.

It almost feels like something Pollard made up on the spot, and perhaps it was. That he didn't ever do anything with it (beyond releasing it on the band's first odds & sods collection as part of its first boxed set), is strange. Then again, it was such a fertile period that Pollard likely felt as if he could crank out tunes like this all day. At the time, he was right.

Mallard Smoke

"Mallard Smoke" provides further evidence of the fertile period between Same Place the Fly Got Smashed and Bee Thousand. It's no surprise to fans who know the band cranked out Propeller and Vampire on Titus during that time, but Robert Pollard was writing so much that the band could have gone in any number of directions.

How would Guided by Voices trajectory have changed if songs like 'Mallard Smoke" were released on Back to Saturn X in 1991? Instead, the band waited until 1992 to release the very different (or at least much more hi-fi) Propeller. Who can say? Propeller went nowhere, but Vampire on Titus, thanks to a bit of promotion from Scat Records, established a beach head that enabled the band to take off (relatively speaking) on Bee Thousand.

"Mallard Smoke" is much more like Vampire on Titus than anything else, a poppy number nearly buried in lo-fi fuzz. It's classic Pollard, however, a driving rocker that would have fit on anything up to and including Alien Lanes.

Of course, the most interesting thing is the song's title (and closing lyric). In context, it's clear it's a putdown, coming as it does right after the line "I'm so sick of you," but beyond that, it's anyone's guess. Either way, it's an angsty little song, with Bob doing his best angry grunge-rocker.

Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun

For every "Dogwood Grains" that seems to redeem the presence of In Shop We Build Electric Chairs as something more than a clearing out of the dregs of Robert Pollard's box of tapes, there is a "Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun," a song whose best feature is its title.

Over an out-of-tune acoustic guitar strum, Robert Pollard sings... something. Again and again. It sounds like his misguided idea of a Native American chant (something bolstered toward the end of the song when he bursts forth in his best, painful Tonto impersonation).

Look, I'm a big fan of Pollard. Far from the biggest, but I'm up there. I like to hear his music in all states, from the roughest demo to the most polished attempt at striking it rich. So, it's my fault that I keep buying Pollard releases, knowing that I am doing so only for the sake of having them. After today, I'll never consciously listen to this song again. That's OK. Every note I hear helps me to better appreciate all of the other notes.

Jimmy

Robert Pollard could rarely be thought of as mellow, but his vocal on "Jimmy" can be described no other way. Pollard seems languid, almost subdued. It works, however, on one of the standouts of Elephant Jokes, an album that has definitely grown on me.

The song has a bit of "A Salty Salute" in its DNA, that slow chugging riff on one chord anchoring things from the outset. The vocal begins with Pollard very casually chanting "all right." Pollard's laconic vocal gives this a slight psychedelic edge, though it really feels like a sprightly pop confection pressed at 45 and played at 33 1/3.

Todd Tobias does some nice things with a (still subdued) shrieking guitar line to complement Pollard's rhythm guitar, giving the song its only real deviation from what could have been a Pollard demo.

The only drawback, and I write this mostly in jest, is the image conjured by the chorus. When Pollard sings of "Jimmy," one assumes he's talking about his brother. So, when he sings, "Jimmy get your love, Jimmy get your gun, Jimmy get your love gun, supersonic love gun," well, it seems a little creepy. It works very well from a musical standpoint, but Jimmy and his love gun would seem to be Jimmy's business, not Bob's. Close family, I guess.

Letters From a Witch

Gringo turns the Circus Devils aesthetic on its head. On the band's past work, Todd Tobias (and occasionally his brother, Tim) has created music that is dark, challenging and dense. It seems to be a chore for Robert Pollard to find spots for his vocals, and while that set up has produced more than its share of happy accidents, it also has led to some incongruous melodies that don't fit very well.

With Gringo, however, the Tobias brothers have crafted songs that seem designed for vocals. There is air and space, a vein left open for Pollard. As such, the songs feel more like songs than noisy collages. It sounds great, but (and this comes from someone with a love/hate relationship with the band) it doesn't sound like the Circus Devils.

Regardless of what you call it or whether it fits, "Letters from a Witch" is a great song. The Tobiases come up with a great, slinky acoustic guitar riff and a little southwestern shuffling beat. Pollard delivers the perfect vocal, the result sounding like some sort of lost Lee Hazelwood track. It's some of the best pure singing he's done in the past couple of years, and the whole thing feels as if everyone was in the room from the first spark of inspiration until the final mixdown was completed.