Maggie Turns to Flies

It took me a long time to get into Robert Pollard's first solo album, and the opening track is the main culprit. The opening 40 seconds, to be precise. The disc begins with some lo-fi tub thumping (courtesy Mitch Mitchell and Jim Pollard, as if Robert Pollard couldn't have done this himself) followed by some backward tape of Pollard singing. Then, the actual song kicks in, and it is as dense as a song can be, as if Pollard wanted to see exactly how much sound can be crammed onto tape. It was off-putting, and though I dabbled a bit with the disc, the fact that there was plenty of Guided by Voices-related product already on my shelf (and plenty more guaranteed to follow shortly), I put it aside.

When I revisited the disc, I was surprised to find I loved "Maggie Turns to Flies." The song found me at the right moment and everything clicked. The opening was easily ignored, and the dense swirl of the music seemed the perfect bed for Pollard's forceful vocals. Now, I consider it a highlight of the album.

Beyond that, two things strike me as interesting about the song. First, that Pollard censors himself, offering the much more palatable title of "Maggie Turns to Flies" despite the fact that the line from which that title derives is about maggots turning to flies. And second, that he can use the maggot-to-fly process as a spot-on metaphor: "Tradewinds blow where maggots turn to flies/ What a better life!" Indeed, how could it not be better to be a fly than a maggot, and who but Pollard would think to turn such sentiments into a song?