Organic Comes On

Robert Pollard has few straight-forward songs. Even his simplest-sounding tunes have twists and turns that make them interesting. It's telling that he relegates one of his most direct songs -- musically speaking, that is -- to a side project that almost ensures it will be little heard and, for those who do hear it, near inscrutable.

Here, Pollard strums his way through a song that wouldn't be out of place at a late-70s Laurel Canyon songwriter's night. Todd Tobias' contributions here are fairly low key, nudging Pollard's song in the right direction rather than dominating it as he must on some of the more slight tracks on this EP.

The lyrics are almost completely indecipherable, but that's no real concern this time. They carry the melody, which in this case is enough. The Psycho and the Birds project is frustrating, because one wishes Pollard would take the time to use these recordings as demos rather than the base for final recordings. But he's too busy to do so (unless the finished product is so catchy, as with "The Killers" from All That is Holy, which he recut for Standard Gargoyle Decisions), so we're left with this.