In the Brain

Robert Pollard's collaborative songs often leave me wondering what the song would sound like if the person providing the backing music had simply finished the song with vocals. "In the Brain," a bonus track that rounds out the singles collected on the Selective Service EP, is a great example.

The song, credited to Airport 5, finds Tobin Sprout offering a mildly psychedelic bit of acoustic jangle over which Pollard sings a fairly standard verse and chorus. Standard, that is, by Pollard standards. It's not terribly odd or unique, but simply something sung with his typical phrasing and inflection. It's a decent song, and almost assuredly different from what Sprout would have done on his own. Whereas Pollard is more forceful, looking for ways to ham an extra syllable in here or to subvert the obvious beat there, Sprout seems more conventional. I can hear his melody in my mind, shadowing Pollard's, and in this case, it makes me want to hear how he would have finished this.

If he had, however, I doubt it would have been as interesting. While Sprout would have taken advantage of the obvious hooks, his reedy voice rising and falling in the right spots, Pollard's challenge to the song's patterns creates points of friction that actually make things more compelling. I don't mean to make this out to be more than it is; "In the Brain" is where it is -- as the tossed-off extra that compels completists to buy the other 10 songs on the disc for a second time -- because it's decent but not great. Still, it's a good example of the ways Pollard has found to keep things interesting after 1,200 songs and counting.