Ovarian Angel Architect

As scattershot as Robert Pollard’s side projects can be, at their best they show how relentlessly creative he can be. Take his tracks on The Completed Soundtrack for the Tropic of Nipples. The entire disc is a curiosity, something to pull out on rare occasions. In fact, I don’t think I’d want to meet the person that had this in heavy rotation. Richard Meltzer’s contributions are interesting – as a rocker, he’s a great critic – while the tracks from punk band Vom are, well, they are there.

But Pollard’s work is at times truly captivating. “Ovarian Angel Architect” is a good example. Though the song is credited to Pollard and the heretofore unknown band Antler, it seems to be built on a short loop that Pollard certainly could have created himself. Given the turntable cracks and pops, I’d guess it’s a one or two-second sample of a handful of bass notes, with Pollard uttering a half syllable to punctuate it. Then, it is endlessly looped over the course of 45 seconds while Pollard recites a short spoken word piece. Unlike most of his subsequent attempts to do so, where he is overly theatrical, here he is low-key and cool, making lines like “to shave the wooden collector of soft toys and other lost joys” seem reasonable and profound.

Rereading the above just now, I’m struck by the fact that I’m not doing this justice. I wouldn’t expect something good to result from this description, yet it does. It’s a collage of sorts, another example of Pollard finding art where others never bother to look.

Mosquitoes Dropped Their Javelins

Robert Pollard had started his strange non-musical noise tangents before the release of the 7" EP Soundtrack for the Tropic of Nipples, but with this release he brought famed rock critic Richard Meltzer along for the ride and promised, with that pairing, much more than he delivered. The EP, expanded for the CD release by adding a handful of 70s-vintage live tracks by Meltzer's band, Vom, contains more noise per groove than nearly any other Pollard-related release --only projects credited to Nightwalker are even in contention, for both make curiosities like Acid Ranch and Hazzard Hotrods sound positively tuneful by comparison.

Strangely, only 8 of the 22 tracks here are Pollard's, all credited to the band Antler, about which nothing seems to be known. "Mosquitoes Dropped Their Javelins" may be the best of the Pollard tracks because the band isn't "playing" and it is a mercifully short 22 seconds during which Pollard, in his best high school thespian mode, intones:

WAIT! there’s no need
for senseless bloodshed
the mosquitoes dropped their
javelins and looked on
oh man
far out
it’s king frog