My Impression Now

Sot

2010-03-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

The perils of the four-track recorder: When you're recording a full band with room mics, unless you dedicate a separate track to a vocal overdub, the lyrics will be buried and indecipherable. Robert Pollard starts off singing strong here. I'm confident the first two words of the lyric are "I walked." Beyond that, until the song comes to an end and he begins to repeat the phrase "There's nothing I'd rather do," I have no idea what he is singing.

That's a problem with some of Vampire on Titus that the listener simply must get past. It would help if there was a strong melody to at least hum along to, but no such luck. It's a fairly standard song that, with a more forceful vocal could perhaps do something for me. Instead, it's kind of a placeholder.

A couple of interesting notes:

--The guitar solo at the end echoes R.E.M.'s "Green Grows the Rushes."
--Tobin Sprout, who co-wrote the track, has performed this live more than Guided by Voices ever did, though Pollard sings lead on the album version.

Please Freeze Me

2010-02-22T13:50:00.000-08:00

As much as I love the full-blown majesty of Guided by Voices when the band was firing on all cylinders, I'm just as captivated (and occasionally more so) by Robert Pollard with an acoustic guitar in his lap. "Please Freeze Me" is a little gem of a song that was apparently cut for Bee Thousand (the fourth version, according to the GBV Database), and is among the few so labeled that didn't make the expanded "Director's Cut" reissue of that album).

I'd argue that it deserved a place on the album proper. It's better than some of the songs on the latter half of that record, and its 1:17 runtime wouldn't overburden the album's 36:30 total. Regardless, it would have fit well, a very strong melody, a good Pollard vocal and little enough fidelity that it wouldn't stick out unduly.

It almost feels like something Pollard made up on the spot, and perhaps it was. That he didn't ever do anything with it (beyond releasing it on the band's first odds & sods collection as part of its first boxed set), is strange. Then again, it was such a fertile period that Pollard likely felt as if he could crank out tunes like this all day. At the time, he was right.

Mallard Smoke

2010-02-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

"Mallard Smoke" provides further evidence of the fertile period between Same Place the Fly Got Smashed and Bee Thousand. It's no surprise to fans who know the band cranked out Propeller and Vampire on Titus during that time, but Robert Pollard was writing so much that the band could have gone in any number of directions.

How would Guided by Voices trajectory have changed if songs like 'Mallard Smoke" were released on Back to Saturn X in 1991? Instead, the band waited until 1992 to release the very different (or at least much more hi-fi) Propeller. Who can say? Propeller went nowhere, but Vampire on Titus, thanks to a bit of promotion from Scat Records, established a beach head that enabled the band to take off (relatively speaking) on Bee Thousand.

"Mallard Smoke" is much more like Vampire on Titus than anything else, a poppy number nearly buried in lo-fi fuzz. It's classic Pollard, however, a driving rocker that would have fit on anything up to and including Alien Lanes.

Of course, the most interesting thing is the song's title (and closing lyric). In context, it's clear it's a putdown, coming as it does right after the line "I'm so sick of you," but beyond that, it's anyone's guess. Either way, it's an angsty little song, with Bob doing his best angry grunge-rocker.

Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun

2010-02-05T07:59:00.000-08:00

For every "Dogwood Grains" that seems to redeem the presence of In Shop We Build Electric Chairs as something more than a clearing out of the dregs of Robert Pollard's box of tapes, there is a "Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun," a song whose best feature is its title.

Over an out-of-tune acoustic guitar strum, Robert Pollard sings... something. Again and again. It sounds like his misguided idea of a Native American chant (something bolstered toward the end of the song when he bursts forth in his best, painful Tonto impersonation).

Look, I'm a big fan of Pollard. Far from the biggest, but I'm up there. I like to hear his music in all states, from the roughest demo to the most polished attempt at striking it rich. So, it's my fault that I keep buying Pollard releases, knowing that I am doing so only for the sake of having them. After today, I'll never consciously listen to this song again. That's OK. Every note I hear helps me to better appreciate all of the other notes.

Jimmy

2010-02-05T07:35:00.000-08:00

Robert Pollard could rarely be thought of as mellow, but his vocal on "Jimmy" can be described no other way. Pollard seems languid, almost subdued. It works, however, on one of the standouts of Elephant Jokes, an album that has definitely grown on me.

The song has a bit of "A Salty Salute" in its DNA, that slow chugging riff on one chord anchoring things from the outset. The vocal begins with Pollard very casually chanting "all right." Pollard's laconic vocal gives this a slight psychedelic edge, though it really feels like a sprightly pop confection pressed at 45 and played at 33 1/3.

Todd Tobias does some nice things with a (still subdued) shrieking guitar line to complement Pollard's rhythm guitar, giving the song its only real deviation from what could have been a Pollard demo.

The only drawback, and I write this mostly in jest, is the image conjured by the chorus. When Pollard sings of "Jimmy," one assumes he's talking about his brother. So, when he sings, "Jimmy get your love, Jimmy get your gun, Jimmy get your love gun, supersonic love gun," well, it seems a little creepy. It works very well from a musical standpoint, but Jimmy and his love gun would seem to be Jimmy's business, not Bob's. Close family, I guess.

Letters From a Witch

2010-02-03T13:53:00.000-08:00

Gringo turns the Circus Devils aesthetic on its head. On the band's past work, Todd Tobias (and occasionally his brother, Tim) has created music that is dark, challenging and dense. It seems to be a chore for Robert Pollard to find spots for his vocals, and while that set up has produced more than its share of happy accidents, it also has led to some incongruous melodies that don't fit very well.

With Gringo, however, the Tobias brothers have crafted songs that seem designed for vocals. There is air and space, a vein left open for Pollard. As such, the songs feel more like songs than noisy collages. It sounds great, but (and this comes from someone with a love/hate relationship with the band) it doesn't sound like the Circus Devils.

Regardless of what you call it or whether it fits, "Letters from a Witch" is a great song. The Tobiases come up with a great, slinky acoustic guitar riff and a little southwestern shuffling beat. Pollard delivers the perfect vocal, the result sounding like some sort of lost Lee Hazelwood track. It's some of the best pure singing he's done in the past couple of years, and the whole thing feels as if everyone was in the room from the first spark of inspiration until the final mixdown was completed.

Father is Good

2010-02-02T06:42:00.001-08:00

Every song on this album that is any good at all makes me lament the choices Robert Pollard makes. Why base a recording on a lo-fi boombox cassette when you could strip that out, add a real vocal and end up with a decent track? Instead, Pollard is content to take old work, pass it off to someone else and then release the results. It's certainly easier for him, but it gives short shrift to his songs.

"Father is Good" is not a great song by any stretch, a riff rocker of the type that Pollard can likely crank out in the time it takes to play it. But it's not bad, either, and leaving it in the shape it's in on All That is Holy does it a disservice. For all intents and purposes, this is a covers album, with Todd Tobias covering Pollard. The only thing keeping it from being such is the presence of Pollard's lo-fi, unintelligible vocals and nearly inaudible acoustic guitar.

Given a better vocal, this could have joined "The Killers" on Standard Gargoyle Decisions. As it is, however, it's just a curiosity and a shadow of what could have been.

The Lodger Carried a Gun

2010-01-27T13:31:00.001-08:00

Robert Pollard's music in the late 1980s was decidedly different from what it would be just a few years later. It was much more conventional, but still had the hallmarks we associate most with his work, hooks being most prominent among them.

He was also prolific, though he hadn't figured out how to get all of that music out to his fanbase at that point (nor, really, had he figured out how to have a fanbase). A song like "The Lodger Carried a Gun" proves the point. It's a solid song from the Devil Between My Toes/Sandbox era that sounds like it never made it past the four-track demo phase.

It begins with an acoustic guitar strum the likes of which launched a million songs by thousands of college bands. Pollard creates a nice vocal melody that offers the main hook. It stumbles a bit on the chorus, which functions here more like a bridge. Pollard's vocal is flat, and he clearly hasn't figured out the best way to drive the song forward. Had it made it past the demo stage, he likely would have fixed those issues.

As it is, however, it's still a decent track, one that offers further evidence of Pollard's early prowess.

Liar's Tale

2010-01-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

The melody of "Liar's Tale" sounds like something lifted from a great lost girl group song. Replace Robert Pollard's heavily tremoloed guitar with a little echoey "chick chick" of rhythm guitar with some sappy backing strings, and you've got yourself a hit.

Even the lyrics suggest such a song. It would need to be sung by a girl - let's think Lesley Gore - and be slightly recast from the female point of view, but it would work:

Let me tell you a story
Conclusive, based on fact
Long ago in the morning
She left did not come back

The key ingredient is the slight shift, taking the song from a simple paean to lost love and transforming it into a cautionary tale for the next boy in line (or in the case of our imagined remake, girl).

I thought she loved me
And I will pray for you
You'll see the truth
Cause that's how it's got to be

People often suggest that had Pollard been born a couple of decades earlier, he would have rivaled Lennon and McCartney or Pete Townsend. But here's proof he could stand toe-to-toe in the Brill Building as well.

Beneath a Festering Moon

2010-01-15T10:57:00.001-08:00

Anyone who has followed Robert Pollard for any length of time knows that he endlessly tinkers with the sequencing of his albums. For evidence, look no further than to the "Directors Cut" edition of Bee Thousand, which shows several proposed tracklistings for what ultimately became known as (one of) Guided by Voices best album(s).

For each album, there usually are several versions, and it is always interesting to see what Pollard left off an album in favor of the final selections. One could always argue the validity of his choices, but in the case of "Beneath a Festering Moon," He got it right.

The track was slated for the aborted album The Flying Party is Here, which was an early working version of Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. It's fine, but would drag down that otherwise stellar album (it's the reason for the qualified "(one of)" above, because I think it's superior to Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, the two albums most often cited as GBV's best). I can't think of a song on that album that I'd trade for this one.

That's not to say it's a bad song; simply that it wouldn't work as well on that album. As an unearthed find ultimately released on The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation Compact Disc, it's a gem. It has the same feel as much of the UTBUTS material, but it lacks the punch of much of that work. Two interesting notes: There is an interesting sound that punctuates the first minute that sounds like someone hitting the back of a guitar neck with the amps turned all the way up, and the song's lyric includes the phrase "steeple of knives," which Pollard would recycle and use as the title of a song on Waved Out.

Make Use

2010-01-14T07:23:00.000-08:00

In 1998, Guided by Voices was poised at the edge of a fairly significant change. It had signed to a mini-major label, had enlisted Ric Ocasek as a producer and was clearly making a stab at the big time. So, it would stand to reason that Robert Pollard's solo album, Waved Out, would act as a sort of transition, coming as it did between Mag Earwhig! and Do the Collapse. I suppose in hindsight that it does, but at the time I wouldn't have thought so.

It's more hi-fi and polished than what came before, but it still sounds more raw than what was soon to follow. It's as if Pollard was taking a stand or making a statement: "Guided by Voices may become that, but I'll always have this to fall back on."

The first track on that album, "Make Use," shows that Pollard is perfectly capable of creating well-crafted, accomplished pop songs in the studio with little outside help. Save for drumming by Jim MacPherson, Pollard does everything here. From the hard-charging guitars to the pitch-shifted keyboard solo to the swirling multi-tracked vocals. It's a great album opener, not too overpowering, but scene-setting with a solid hook.

Lyrically, it can be read in hindsight as a commentary on the band's pending leap to the big leagues (or rather, leap toward the big leagues that left them clawing at the edges before falling). Pollard opens with this gem: "A bold night for my new rock shirt/ expected a burn-hole, expected the worst."

He goes on to reference someone has "suffered the changes again," but assures the listener that while you can "guess what they've been spreading/but we're not forgetting," which would seem to indicate that while calls of sell out rang out, the band wouldn't forget its roots.

"Make use" is a decent manifesto for someone like Pollard who clearly craves success but doesn't want to be seen pursuing it. "Make of the bold proposition/ make use the vast fashions/ the passion is soon to burn out," he sings. Make use of the resources the bigger label offers, but be aware that it surely won't last. Wise words, NostraBobus.

Lizard Food

2010-01-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I proclaimed that I would no longer buy each and every release that Robert Pollard issued. It was a foolish, shortsighted and flat-out wrong statement, as I have energetically worked to keep up with his output. If I'm not mistaken, Ringworm Interiors was the straw that, well, temporarily put the camel on the DL.

You'll have to forgive me, fellow Pollard worshippers. It was 2001. Guided by Voices had made it's big rock move with Isolation Drills. My idea of a Pollard side project was Airport Five or, if you wanted to get real (or at least relatively) challenging, the Howling Wolf Orchestra. Now, of course, the Circus Devils are no big deal, seamlessly absorbed into the full spectrum of Pollardiana. But then, this was a very strange, fairly abrasive side of Pollard that I wasn't sure I wanted to follow.

Listening now to a track like "Lizard Food," I can see both sides. It's a long way from "Glad Girls," but it also offers a fresh aspect of Pollard's art, an early peek at the boastful, aggressive Pollard vocal that he has explored over the past decade. It's as if he's channelling Tom Cruise's character from "Magnolia" as he goes into evil salesman mode to exhort, "Challenge your stamina, save your breath/challenge your weaknesses, this is a test."

The burble and churn of Todd and Tim Tobias' guitars and drums give the song a nervous energy that makes one glad the song is little more than a minute long. It's no perfect pop confection, but Pollard has crafted enough of those to give him license to indulge these basement urges.

Beat Your Wings

2010-01-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

"Beat Your Wings" never really did anything for me until I listened to it on headphones. The song is overlong, has a pretty boring melody and doesn't do much musically. Robert Pollard seemed to plan it that way; the demo version on Edison's Demos is pretty much a perfect template for what followed. No surprises, and strangely for Pollard, few hooks.

But something happens on the studio version when it is pumped through headphones. There are just enough little things going on to keep my interest. The bass burbling beneath open chords adds a bit of allure, while Pollard's slightly treated vocal (just a bit of reverb, really) carries the minimal melody more effectively. As the song progresses, the sound expands, with some swirling guitar (likely thanks to Doug Gillard) and a double-tracked vocal that elevate the melody. It's not much, but it's enough.

With my interest piqued just enough, I'm willing to expend the mental energy required to follow the long lyric. It's a pretty straightforward story with just enough of Pollard's trademark obliquity to keep the listener on his toes. It actually feels more like his earlier, more sentimental work (which is echoed more on his more modern songs). The first verse is as close as Pollard has come to truly publishable poetry:

will the wind that scatters dust,
reveal its secrets,
speak to us,
of many things.
in the morning when she comes,
the bird who wakes you with her song,
she'll beat her wings.
she will rise again.

A later verse induces head-scratching, but in a pleasing way:

bless the sunlight,
grab the stakes and make you over,
save the bullet,
price the sandman's head,
this time do not roll over,
beat your wings.

It feels like a song of affirmation and uplift, which perhaps pervades the music itself to give it added appeal:

when the days have come to pass
our journey broken gone at last,
well beat our wings,
shadows take familiar skin,
so recognize them don't give in,
well beat our wings,
we will rise again.

I'll be curious to see if that appeal is as readily audible when it's pumping out of the car stereo as it is on headphones.

Just by Pushing a Button

2010-01-08T12:52:00.000-08:00

Robert Davies' music is minimalist, sometimes hinging on just an instrument or two. It works for him because he has a strong sense of melody and a commanding vocal presence that fits well with the stripped-down arrangements. Pairing with Robert Pollard, who seems capable of excelling in any sonic environment, was inspired, but it doesn't always work as well as one might hope or expect.

"Just by Pushing a Button" is a spare song, with a shaker and spare piano offering the only backing. Where Davies might fill much of the resultant space with an ornate melody and droll lyrics, Pollard doesn't ever seem as if he's comfortable fusing his ideas with the rest of the song. His melody takes some interesting twists and turns, but the whole thing never coheres as a song. It sounds like what it is: One artist issuing a challenge in the form of a wide-open song arrangement to another artist, and that second artist unable make it his own.

The best point of comparison is watching someone try to fake their way through the second verse of a well-known song. Pay attention the next time you're at an event and they launch into the second verse of "America the Beautiful." "Thy um.... cities.... um..." most people will utter in more of a hum than a full-throated vocal, glad when the song ends. Pollard may not be quite that bad, but he doesn't sound at all confident, either.

The Terrible Two

2010-01-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

A few times here, seeking something out of left field, I have done a search of the Guided by Voices Database to find a song with lyrics related to something going on in my life. Last year, after we suffered devastating floods here, I wrote about "Navigating Flood Regions." Today, after shoveling several inches of snow so I could get the car out of the driveway and head to work, I decided to seek out a Robert Pollard song with "snow" in the lyrics.

My search unearthed six, including "The Terrible Two" from Suitcase. It was a fortuitous find, for it's a good song I had forgotten thanks to its position at the start of the first disc in the set. When I pull out Suitcase, I'm usually seeking something I haven't heard much and delve deeper into the set. But my search today led me straight to this gem from 1993.

The lyric does indeed mention snow in reference to a drive through the Canadian tundra. The story seems very specific, and likely references a certain event; Pollard's lyrics at this time seemed more literal in spots than they would eventually be. Pollard and friends are driving someone's Thunderbird through Canada, but he isn't supposed to divulge the details. The same goes for a friend who shouldn't know he has tickets to the circus of delirium.

Pollard unleashes a nice line on the bridge, with "take the time to stumble, show them faith in something larger in your life."

No great words of wisdom to be found here to help me deal with the deluge of snow, but it's a nice, warm lo-fi gem from Pollard that'll at least raise my spirits. For now, that's enough.

Nets at Every Angle

2010-01-06T08:22:00.001-08:00

There is a sort of swaggering menace that characterizes many Circus Devils songs, and for its first half, "Nets at Every Angle" fits that profile perfectly. It's built on a base of skittering keyboards and churning guitar chords, and Robert Pollard's vocal is more boastful declaration than singing. As such, it feels indistinguishable from many other Circus Devils songs save for a short whistled line that serves as a chorus of sorts.

Then, two-thirds of the way in, all of that fades away, replaced by a quiet, heavily treated guitar line over which Pollard sings the song's title, his vocal heavily reverbed, his singing given the effect of a round. It's a cathartic release that makes the first part of the song resonate more effectively, and gives the song a unique identity.

Andy Playboy

2010-01-05T13:56:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine had a band at one time. If he was singing "Andy Playboy" instead of Robert Pollard, I'd swear he wrote this song. Alas, he didn't and Pollard did. If my friend wrote the song, I could ask him who Andy Playboy really is, and he'd probably give me some jazz about it being a composite character or a fictional creation or some such. As it is, the next time I get the chance to talk with Pollard, this question would be way down the list. I don't really need the explanation to enjoy the song. It's a quick, catchy tune about a guy playing in a band on the road. I'm guessing if I had my guitar in my lap, I could figure out how to play this before it's 1:26 run time elapsed. Nothing wrong with that.

One interesting thing to note: the Boston Spaceships double live album, Licking Stamps & Drinking Shitty Coffee, was issued on Andy Playboy Channel Records. It's a one-off, name, of course, the fourth Pollard has created since going out on his own.

Mute Superstar

2010-01-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

I've never really bought the idea that Mag Earwhig! is a concept album, but there are tracks whose lyrics seem explainable no other way. "Mute Superstar" is a case in point. It's a song that usually gets lost in the shuffle, coming as it does as track 20 on a 21-track album. It has a nice little riff, a good melody and a compact arrangement that makes me want to hear it again on those rare occasions that I make it that far on the album.

But the lyric is both strange and specific. In their entirety:

I see them in the dark
Fairy wings are green
Chemical minx disguises
Significant pink UFOs I'm not up there!
Approach me now!
We hope these cables will serve you well
We hold these truths and they're not to sell
I'm not up there!
Approach me now!

If I recall correctly, the story has to do with insects, and the "fairy wings" and "significant pink UFOs" could certainly refer to such. The lines that really make me think that Robert Pollard has something specific in mind are those about the cables and truths. That seems part of a larger story, but the meaning is elusive.

Lightshow

2009-12-07T09:30:00.000-08:00

I have declared From a Compound Eye Robert Pollard's best solo album (and, depending on the day, the best, most complete thing he has ever done). As such, I have listened to it more than almost any other album of his. So, I was surprised when "Lightshow" popped up on shuffle and I didn't recognize it.

At first, I thought that was because it was somewhat unremarkable. Later, as the hook insinuated itself in my mind, I realized it was because the song is simply not among the dozen or so completely boss tunes on the disc, and thus hasn't had the staying power that those have enjoyed.

Hearing it here, out of context and unexpected, was a treat. It's a good song; not great, particularly given its surroundings, but it fits very well with the rest of the album and, about halfway through, takes on a sort of soaring majesty that gives it a solid hook.

Now, for the deep stuff. This song seems completely autobiographical.

In his mirror a laughing king
his courtyard crawling
howling clowns at his side
there are no blanks in this boy's rifle
cocked and loaded
fist and fingers white

If that isn't Pollard, I don't know what is. The laughing king surrounded by howling clowns. And, we all know Pollard's self-worth is high, so the notion that he has "no blanks" in his rifle fits.

back and forth
when now they bring his cape, crown and mask
blazing heavy
angels all around him
such paradise would surely
make him frown and fall

This is harder, but it still works. Post Bee Thousand, Pollard got what he wanted, the ability to perform for a living his figurative "cape, crown and mask." But, stardom eluded him, that "paradise" making his "frown and fall."

he glows
exposed
tranformed
he knows

tries rockin' and spits up something foul
no stopping the kicking stillborn now
'cus they're men first
and they grow up fast on the side
in the lightshow
where there's no place left you can hide

This, again, takes a bit of shoehorning to make work, but lets say that the spitting up of something foul and the kicking stillborns refer to sidemen who have gone their own way. "They grow up fast on the side in the lightshow," he sings, as if admitting that he continually needed fresh blood in Guided by Voices because he shed sidemen looking to do their own thing too often.

"For Liberty"

2009-12-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

By the time of Universal Truths and Cycles, the idea of a short, acoustic Robert Pollard tune was quaint. So, when he dropped a trifle like "For Liberty" on the B-side of "Back to the Lake" (and subsequently on The Pipe Dreams of Instant Prince Whippet EP), it was worth celebrating. Even Pollard's short songs by this point were full on blasts (the contemporaneous "Wire Greyhounds" and "Love 1" from UTAC, for example). There's not much here in terms of a melody or the instrumentation. One assumes Pollard is playing guitar, though the tone sounds like that achieved by Doug Gillard during these sessions, so who knows.

Regardless, it's a nice change of pace with interesting lyrical images. Particularly of note is the second "verse," where Pollard sings,

Enjoy our daughters of joy
and its the finer things in life
that allow us to stand up
for liberty only even without reaching.

Given the nautical references in the first verse, it would seem to be some sort of historical utterance, but shoot forward to today, and the idea that "the finer things in life allow us to stand up for liberty" is a pretty decent political slogan.

Stars, Stripes and Crack Pipes

2009-12-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

This may be the best song title Robert Pollard has come up with in a long time, and it fits the music created by the Tobias brothers, a slinky strut of a song that finds Pollard speaking the lyric more than singing it. And those lyrics include some great lines that sound like the voice-over from a grizzled gumshoe in a '40s private eye film:

"I need a new place to travel and a body that's not an impostor."

"Into a secret room with a mute pencil I dive."

"I could not survive the tyranny of that dimly lit, cracked, wallpaper skin."

Add to that the most menacing "whoahs" on record, and the result is one of the more successful Circus Devils experiments.

The Winter Cows

2009-12-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

It's no surprise, in hindsight, that Robert Pollard blew up Guided by Voices between 1996 and 1997. After releasing what I think is the band's best album, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, things fractured. Pollard and Tobin Sprout released solo albums, and GBV felt as if it had gone as far as it could go. A couple of back-to-basics releases at the end of the year seemed like a last gasp before Pollard sacked the band, brought Cobra Verde on board to back him and headed toward the arena.

Those last releases of 1996 -- the Plantations of Pale Pink and Sunfish Holy Breakfast EPs -- are among my least favorite GBV releases. The uninitiated might have expected Pollard and Co. to keep cranking out records as great as UTBUTS, but fans knew the mercurial Pollard always had a curveball set to fly.

These releases feel, at least in sprit, like Universal Truths and Cycles. Like that album, these EPs followed what was at the time GBV's most hi-fi release, and, like UTandC, they represented a retrenchment and almost blatant poke in the eye. "You liked that?" they seem to say. "Let's see what you think of this."

"The Winter Cows" isn't necessarily representative of Sunfish Holy Breakfast, though it's rather low-key approach and lack of a real strong hook means it has some company. It's fine, but unremarkable. Pollard and Sprout bang at guitars (at least one of which is slightly out of tune) while Pollard sings strange lyrics over a decent melody. It does seem that, for a change, he's actually singing about what you think he's singing about, in this case, winter cows. From their "lowly croak" to the way that "they know just what will come," Pollard is fascinated.

It's a long way from this acoustic trifle to the bombastic glory of "I Am a Tree," even if only a few months separate the two on the release schedule. We know by now that if Pollard records it, he releases it, so this odds and sods EP seems like a clearing of the deck before something new.

Headhunter Who Blocks the Sky

2009-12-01T13:21:00.000-08:00

The music of Circus Devils is challenging at times, but it's often worth the effort because that same challenge is issued to Robert Pollard. Whenever you think he's phoning it in with a string of two-minute pop ditties, just slid a Circus Devils disc into the player and watch Uncle Bob squirm.

Or, in the case of a track like, "Headhunter Who Blocks the Sky," watch him seamlessly drop himself into the tune. Todd Tobias creates a soundtrack-worthy swirl of sound here, with pounding drums and keening keyboards that sound like elkhorns being blown on distant mountaintops.

Pollard gets into the scene here with a short but powerful lyric that helps to conjure such a setting:

The sun is shining on his path
when he comes to make you talk
he’ll be wearing red pants
hunting and eating.

There is promise there that isn't fulfilled; it's a short track, and rather than jam it full of lyrics to tell some sort of tale, Pollard opts for minimalism, offering only one more short verse:

The white circle of summer
false teeth in his breath pack
young and exotic
where land disappears...

It's enough, however. Tobias is the star here; Pollard is almost another instrument (albeit the one that makes all of us Pollard/GBV obsessives pony up $15 for a CD of music we might not otherwise seek out.

Confessions of a Teenage Jerk-off

2009-11-04T07:56:00.000-08:00

Robert Pollard is Off to Business seems to be positioned as Pollard's bit rock record. It has just 10 songs over 35 minutes, with some of his longest songs on record. Most are bombastic pop, a sort of hermetic stab at the feel of the Do the Collapse-Isolation Drills era Guided by Voices. But there is variety, too.

By now, a Pollard fan could see a song title like "Confessions of a Teenage Jerk-off" and conjure a pretty clear idea of how it should sound. Not this time. Rather than a quick one-joke riff, he has crafted an epic ballad that grows into a majestic track. It would be nice if the hooks were stronger and would thus justify such grandeur, but it's always nice at this late date to see Pollard expressing something driven by ambition.

The protagonist (perhaps Pollard himself?) is the anti-hero here, the "teenage jerk-off" of the title. As such, this is a true confession. At its core, the song feels like the singer's protracted (and, of course, because this is Pollard, somewhat convoluted) apology to a girl from his past. The song starts minimally, with acoustic guitars and Pollard singing. As he gets into the confession, however, he seems to get more bold, and the music emboldens behind him in support/empathy. By the time the lyric evolves from a self-laceration to a fond reminiscence, he sounds positively in control and the musical backing is in full flower.

Those days were crazy
An amusement park in hell
Felt so wrong and happy
I thought I'd never tell.

The next bit places this in "'79 or '80," which fits with Pollard's own timeline, and he drops a fantastic image at the end of the song, giving it a wistful, almost poetic close:

The stars in the morning
Are as pebbles against glass
Gone black without warning
Dare to preach you

Pivotal Film

2009-11-03T12:05:00.000-08:00

It isn't often that a Guided by Voices song can pop up on the iPod's shuffle and I won't instantly know who it is. I might not instantly recall the title or album, but I'll know it is GBV. That isn't the case with "Pivotal Film." It came up this morning, and I thought it was a deep cut from a Foo Fighters album or something similar. Then Robert Pollard began to sing and quickly reoriented my ears.

That's not to say that this is faceless riff rock... though it comes pretty close. By the time the song really takes off and soars on the back of Pollard's vocal melody and some particularly muscular guitar work from Doug Gillard, it really starts to fee like a GBV track.

Isolation Drills and Universal Truths and Cycles are an interesting period for GBV. The band seems as if it wants to fully embrace the arena sound that it seemed to flirt with for so long, yet it's clear that ultimately this isn't the strength that will sustain it longterm. This version of GBV can ably pull off this sort of thing, but when it does so it loses much of the shambling charm that made the band so compelling in the first place.