Fairly Blacking Out

I always considered Chris Slusarenko the luckiest guy in the world. Here he was, the proprietor of the micro-indie Off Records, a label that issued the one-off oddity Soundtrack for the Tropic of Nipples that paired Robert Pollard with rock writer Richard Meltzer. Then suddenly, he's the bass player in Guided by Voices! Of course, nothing is that simple. Slusarenko led the Sub Pop band Sprinkler, and has many other music world connections. What at the time seemed like Pollard grabbing a friend and making him his bass player now seems like a prudent move to add another talented musician to his arsenal.

Tracks like "Fairly Blacking Out" are the proof. The song, found on the first Takeovers disc Turn to Red, is another of Pollard's collaborations wherein someone records the song bed and then sends the tape to Bob for vocals to be added. Slusarenko's two Takeovers discs are the most stripped-down of all these collaborations, but in some ways that makes them among the most satisfying. Instead of relying on the other musician's chops to carry the song, here Pollard is forced to do more heavy lifting. With "Fairly Blacking Out," Bob takes a fairly simple garage-influenced riff and elevates it into a song that stands among the best of his Fading Captain years (something confirmed by its inclusion on the Crickets collection).

This is fairly straight-forward riff rock, but listening to it on headphones for the first time reveals some interesting noises and keyboards in the background. Pollard seems to be trying to say something in the verses, starting with, "She said that’s a cute cat, yeah, weather really dumped on us last year," but the chorus, which simply repeats the title along with the admonitions that "you know where we got it" and "you can't beat the system," seem hastily composed.

One funny spoken line seems incongruous, but maybe I'm missing something: "Your parents spent a shitload of money on you so you can end every statement of your slowly delivered speech with your inflection, question, you know?"

Then there's that great psych guitar (or is that a keyboard?) solo toward the end, something that probably should have been used more prominently through out. All of it comes together to create a song that fits as well in Pollard's discography as it would on a Nuggets compilation, and one that assures that Slusarenko is considered to be more than just the lucky bass player.