Interest Position
"Interest Position" may be the least-compelling track on the Hold on Hope EP, though that's really no slight. Song for song, this short disc in support of Robert Pollard's clearest stab at commercial success is probably Guided by Voices strongest release. Most people point to the Bee Thousand-Alien Lanes era as Pollard's strongest period; I would cite Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and Mag Earwig as the true high point. But no matter your thoughts about the presentation and production on the band's big label debut, Do the Collapse, it's hard to argue that the songs aren't among the strongest of Pollard's career. That he could offer a nine-song EP with eight LP castoffs that are this good is testament to the fact that he was firing on all cylinders here.
"Interest Position" is a fine song. But compared to the other winners on this EP, it comes up just short. Musically it's fairly bland, the song truly carried by Pollard's inventive melody conveyed with a double-tracked vocal.
Lyrically there is little to latch onto. In fact, the best thing may be the short opening riff and Doug Gillard's slightly unhinged solo that closes the track.
"Interest Position" is a fine song. But compared to the other winners on this EP, it comes up just short. Musically it's fairly bland, the song truly carried by Pollard's inventive melody conveyed with a double-tracked vocal.
Lyrically there is little to latch onto. In fact, the best thing may be the short opening riff and Doug Gillard's slightly unhinged solo that closes the track.
Labels: Daredevil Stamp Collector, Hold on Hope
posted by John at 5:48 PM
10 Comments:
the song title is "interest position," but you go on to talk about "underground initations"...wha?
also: i don't get the hype about this EP. "tropical robots" is one of pollard's best, true, and "a crick uphill" is a very solid tune, but the rest...eh. it's decent, but nothing sublime.
Thanks, Jacob. The song title references in the post have been fixed.
As for the "hype," I just think it's one of Pollard's best releases. As I say, I think this is the weakest track, and there's really nothing wrong even with that. I appreciate his lo-fi wanderings and experiments, but at the end of the day, an EP with nine good-to-great songs is a winner.
i'm with you on UTBUTS/Mag being GBV's zenith.
my first exposure to the band was in 1995, so I'd always bought into the cult of Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes. over the years I've come to realize that, while those discs are amazing, UTBUTS & Mag are just a smidge better.
great posts lately. keep it up.
great records both, but you guys are talkin' nonsense.
Jakob, are you in the Bee Thousand-Alien Lanes camp or something else?
I totally disagree with you on Interest Position! Rather than being bland, I think it conveys an appealing air of mystery.
The lyrics are compellingly mysterious as well. "We have to nominate a signal we can understand." I think of communication across multiple physical and non-physical worlds, trying to get together, to convey some really important piece of information. How do you even do that when you can't even be sure you're working from the same context?
Sure, that's all a little out there. Pollard's lyrics speak to me in a way that no other songwriter's do; part of the appeal is that they are so open-ended and enigmatic. This song evokes some wonderful meaning from my brain.
YMMV. :)
short answer: yeah. but that's because that stuff truly is their most idiosyncratic, original, timeless shit. alien lanes is the absolute pinnacle because it's execution, writing and production working in perfect harmony: the short little tunes, the way they all blend together, the hazy quality of the recording, the obtuse performances and the absurdist lyrics — it all sounds like a stream of consciousness straight from an unfathomably beautiful, childlike imagination. it achieves this effect even moreso than bee thousand — and in fact, i would say that no other album in history comes close to achieving a similar effect so damn well. it's perfect and unparalleled at what it does.
sure, i think mag earwhig! is fucking great, and under the bushes under the stars is even better — if it means anything, "learning to hunt" is in my top 10 songs of all time and no other GBV is — and i even love do the collapse for the nugget of high-sheen synth pop/rock for what it is. but frankly, these sounds are all ones that have been done before, and better. alien lanes and, to a bit of a lesser extent, bee thousand, find pollard and company doing something that's really never been done before. the fidelity was no gimmick, it was intrinsic to the music itself.
in my opinion pollard lost the plot with isolation drills and hasn't ever managed to truly get it back since. he occasionally comes up with shit that's still great ("the butler stands for us all," "gratification to concrete," that awesome takeovers EP), and very occasionally on the same level as his old stuff ("zoom"), but he's not playing to his strengths anymore. i really dug that town of mirrors book though, and am thinking of investing in more EATs (i only have #1).
to throw more noise into the conversation, i'd have to rank UTBUTS as the best GBV album, making it therefore the single greatest album ever released...my humble opinion, of course...there is something different about bob's output these days, to be sure, but i hesitate to say that he "lost the plot" or that something is missing...do i react the same way to his current releases that i did to all of the gbv classics (which, i'd probably concede, mostly end with isolation drills)? well, no, i don't, but i still enjoy his music more than anything else, and i also chalk it up to changes in myself and the way i listen rather than thinking that bob made a wholesale left turn along the way...and while this is a tired point, i do think it's true: you can't expect any artist to always do the same thing, especially someone as dynamic as bob...he needs to keep himself interested, and if he were making his 18th variation on bee thousand this year, he'd likely be feeling pretty stagnant by now...
and i figure that the guy already gave us several of the greatest albums ever made, so i'm not gonna begrudge him exploring a few divergent paths at this point, even if they don't quite kick my ass the way they used to...still better than just about everything else!
Wow, a real live discussion a year and a half into doing this!
As much as I think Todd Tobias is a very talented musician, songwriter and producer, I think that you can peg the beginning of Pollard's less-fertile period to the onset of his relationship with Tobias. I've been writing about Pollard's music for a long time now, and I'm still having trouble articulating the difference. I think it comes down to a lack of playfulness in the music. Moments that might have come of lighthearted in the past seem more heavy handed now, and there is a much more sinister vibe to much of the music (which could be a symptom of Pollard's mindset, of course).
That's why I was so glad to see him do the Boston Spaceships project. Working with different people in more of a band setting (though it was more like his work with Tobias than that with GBV in terms of process) surely taps a different part of his creativity. It was a good, not great album, but at least it sounded somewhat different from what he's done recently.
As for UTBUTS transcendence, I think a lot of it has to do with its transitional nature between the lo-fi that came before and the hi-fi that came after. I wouldn't limit that just to recording fidelity either, but more a general outlook and execution of the music.
it's funny, reading that last paragraph puts my own listening history into perspective.
in my nacent stages of GBV fandom, i skipped over UTBUTS and went from obsessing with Alien Lanes right to obsessing with Mag. i always thought the difference in mood (or, "outlook and execution" as you say) odd, and sort of chalked it up to the lineup overhaul. years later, spending time with UTBUTS, i find it really does brige the gap between what came before & what comes after.
and while were throwing around names of co-conspirators & the sway they've had on Bob, a big high-five to Doug Gillard. i've always enjoyed the work the two do together. cripes, "I Am A Tree" is probably my favorite GBV song (this week, anyway), and it's not even a Bob song!
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