Captain Black

Whenever "Captain Black" pops up on shuffle play, I have one of two fairly diametrically opposed thoughts: The first is that the song is one of those snippets Robert Pollard does so well -- a quick hook that is neither verse nor chorus, and then done. The second is that the song's lyric is much lengthier and more involved than it is. The truth is somewhere in between.

The hook is strong from the beginning. Though there is little there. It's simply Pollard singing a strong melody over a quiet trio backing. The lyric lasts less than two minutes, which gives rise to that first thought. But the song itself is three minutes long, meaning that quiet backing goes on for quite a while. In this case, it is joined by engineer John Shough's piano, a much too infrequent addition to the Guided by Voices/Pollard arsenal. Despite that length, the lyric is concise; it feels like the soundtrack to a short story, in part because of its brevity and in part because of the level of detail packed into that small space.