Volcano Divers

Having recorded dozens of short, quirky songs on various devices over the past several years, I can attest that some songs start with little more than a bit of guitar strum that feels right and some nonsensical phrase that fits that music. Most times, it results in 30 seconds of tape kept in the hope that it will spark a real live song some day, but which is usually left as is, to be heard when an unmarked tape is pulled from a box and popped into the deck to satisfy curiosity.

And then there is Robert Pollard, whose odd fragments like that are good enough to stand on their own. Heck, for a few key years, that seemed to make up the bulk of his output, and no one complained.

"Volcano Divers" always struck me as that kind of song. He plucked out a little guitar figure, stumbled across a way to make an odd, underwater sound with his effects pedals and then sang the first thing that came to mind. Hearing how it sounded, he likely decided to finish it, such as it was, fleshing out the lyric just enough to call it a song. Oddly, for such a short song, he sings "You got a lot to say, but hey, don't say it. So much reported and so much distorted." A song about the beauty of brevity in a world of too much information? Well, of course, it would only include 25 words sung over the course of 79 seconds.