Andy Playboy

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.

You Satisfy Me

"You Satisfy Me" sounds at first blush like a love song from a happy Robert Pollard. Leaving aside the whole argument about artists and pain and creativity and the affect happiness might be having on his recent output, you certainly can't begrudge the guy his happiness or his willingness to so overtly express it in song. For a guy who traffics so completely in oblique lyrics, Pollard is fairly straightforward here: It doesn't get much more direct than to tell your lover "you satisfy me."

But at one point, Pollard seems somewhat defensive, as if his buddies have been criticizing him -- or worse, talking behind his back -- for spending so much time with the missus: "I don't want you recognize, I don't want your lips licking lies all around her."

Whatever the motivation, he has created one of his best vocal melodies in recent memory to sit atop the decent guitar riff that drives this song. Cheesy as it is to say, given Pollard's lackluster output of late, songs like "You Satisfy Me" still... well, you know.

Brown Submarine

Anyone looking for Robert Pollard's tribute to "Yellow Submarine" will be disappointed. Instead, as the title track of the Boston Spaceship's debut disc, he offers a dour, acoustic dirge. It's a short song with a descending acoustic guitar figure over which Pollard sings about taking his love down in a brown submarine. Still, as simple and short as the song is, Pollard wrings an interesting melody from it.

The final verse/chorus?, with Pollard's vocals now doubletracked, is particularly chilling as he sings "And the old men in boats are the ghosts of the sea, We've Nutella and toast in our brown submarine." I'm not sure what a nutty chocolate spread has to do with things, but as Chris Slusarenko's cello comes in to play the song out, it takes on a creaky feel that gives the feeling of being at sea.

All this makes the song sound quaint, a throwback of sorts, and sonically it certainly is. But the first thing I thought when I heard that Pollard's new band was called Boston Spaceships and it's first album was Brown Submarine was that Pollard was having us on, offering some B.S. from B.S. That the album title could be seen as a not-so-thinly veiled scatological reference only enhanced that notion.

Was I wrong? Perhaps, though when it comes to subversive and sophomoric humor, it's hard to read too much into Pollard's lyrics and actions. Rather, I'd like to think this song was his attempt to subvert that. Yeah, he seems to say, I was having a laugh... or was I?