Where is Out There?

Speedtraps for the Bee Kingdom is an odd little record, even for Robert Pollard's catalog. It was released in the waning days of 2000, a year that saw no official Guided by Voices album, but which did see release of the sprawling, awe-inspiring first Suitcase boxed set. Coming just two months after that 100-song set hit the doorstep, it was easy to ignore this modest collection from something dubbed the Howling Wolf Orchestra. It was, like Lexo and the Leapers that came before it and the Soft Rock Renegades that followed, a one-off group assembled from among Pollard's stable to record some stray tracks.

This time out Pollard grabbed Nate Farley, the former guitar tech turned recent band addition, and brother Jim Pollard, to flesh out his songs. In the case of "Where is Out There?" however, it doesn't seem as if Farley or Jim took part. The song is entirely built on an acoustic guitar and Pollard's multi-tracked, heavily echoey and processed vocals. It's a pretty song made slightly more interesting by the vocal effects. Lyrically, it's another of Pollard's songs that likely started life as a poetry fragment:

Ego wheels in motion
Where is out there?
It belongs to nocturnal boyhood
Figureless fathers in their complete nonexample
And fresh pleasures elsewhere - No!
She wants concrete language
Bad lungs and an ape that changes colors.

Some interesting images there, but not much that coheres. As with many of Pollard's side projects, however, this one isn't about getting a message across or telling a story.