A Crick Uphill

What a perfect B side. It's hard with Robert Pollard's catalog to categorize something as quirky, but at the point the Hold on Hope EP was released, Guided by Voices had a very polished, muscular sound. As such, there wasn't really a place for an odd little ditty like "A Crick Uphill" on Do the Collapse. On an EP, however, it was a perfect fit.

The song is a constantly escalating trip through Pollard's psyche. It begins with a jaunty acoustic guitar as Pollard begins tripping through absurdity: "Pike fly mighty, every thing tries to
In the uphill crick," he sings. As the song progresses, instruments join that initial guitar, beefing up the sound and bringing a sense of urgency to the proceedings. A snare drum comes in first, followed by a loping bass. At this point, the song still sounds like something a busking trio might perform on a street corner. Pollard begins to throw some weight behind his vocals now, singing "Give me strength, blow some life into me Jesus, yeah" with conviction.

The second verse finds an electric guitar adding some color, eventually sounding like a lick from some lost Gene Clark nugget. The "blow some life into me" line again brings an escalation, the electric guitar now offering full-on chords that bathe the song in rock glory. The snare gives way to a full kit, the cymbal crashes and bass drum kicks giving the beat full form. By this point, lacking only a bit of Ric Ocasek-ordained studio polish, the song sounds like something from Do the Collapse. As if sensing that he had massaged this slight tune into a juggernaut worthy of the GBV imprimatur, Pollard brings things to a close with a simple, "You're okay."