Tear It Out

Hearing an artist's juvenilia can be an interesting and surprising experience. Robert Pollard is to be commended for letting his fans hear a boatload of it. In this case, it's a solo demo from 1988, the year between the release of Guided by Voices' first and second LPs. Anyone familiar with those albums and everything that came after knows that Pollard's lyrics grew more sophisticated, obtuse and circumspect as he progressed as a songwriter. That said, hearing straightforward songs like "Tear It Out" is still startling.

The song, found on the first disc of the Suitcase boxed set, featured Pollard accompanying himself on electric guitar. It's a song of heartbreak with little obfuscation involved. The singer has been hurt by a lover and is issuing a challenge: fish or cut bait.

You must have had a lot of time to eat your cake
Don't you think you can have it now?

It's the kind of song one expects from a hard rock frontman going solo for the first time. Freed from the constraints of the band's hard sound and lyrics penned by the domineering guitarist, he bears his soul with a tender ballad that makes the girls swoon and the guys gag.

That said, few would write lines like Pollard:

You must have had a million guys to show you pain
Don't you think you could shake their hands
I challenge you to figure out the truth
A picture and a spoiling wasted youth

In the end, Pollard's heartbreak kid resigns himself to the facts, telling his estranged lover, "You can't be strong," he sings, "But you're always right." Turning those words back on their creator, I'd say he was neither strong nor right in this case, but we'll forgive him, offering credit for the abundance of those traits in what followed, and thank him for letting us hear him at his most pedestrian and fallible so that we might know the difference.