Zoo Pie

I run hot and cold on "Zoo Pie," my reaction usually having to do with how I listen to the song. If it followed Do the Collapse opener, "Teenage FBI," I often have little patience, wanting to move right to "Things I Will Keep," another great power pop tune. If I hear it independent of its album, I usually give it a chance. It's a strange song, to be sure, without an obvious hook until late in its 2 minute run time. By now, the odd title passes without notice, Robert Pollard having long since exhausted his ability to shock. The aggressive rock of the song is a bit jarring after the meaty but ultimately quite poppy opening track, bludgeoning any idea of a hook until Pollard sings the bridge, "Come on baby do it, to me you can do it, I've already a plan (I know that you can)." The band seems to bear down here, and the one real solid hook of the song reveals itself. It's still rather slight in my book, but it does have its merits.

In Stitches

This plodding power-chord extravaganza strikes me as Robert Pollard's take on metal. It's far from it, of course, but the heavy riffage is monotonous like most metal (send your letters to MIN c/o I Don't Care). The song is best known to me as the origin of the line "human amusement at hourly rates," which was repurposed by Pollard as the title of Guided by Voices' best of disc.

Beyond that, it's a chance for Doug Gillard to play guitar god while the rest of the band plods along in lockstep. Pollard doesn't do much with the vocal, letting it blend with the music rather than use it to drive the song in a different, more interesting direction. In fact, Gillard is the star here, if there need be one, with his guitar solo nicely dropped atop the song to provide a blast of energy. The closest the song gets to a hook is on the bridge, where guitars are neutered and Pollard sings something with an actual melody, with images worthy of the delivery:

Permanent holy wars dissolve and crash
On the red horizon
Busted bottle red sunshine
Moonfire flickering

Regardless, it's a disposable interlude on the otherwise solid first side of Do the Collapse.

Things I Will Keep

While I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I secretly (and somewhat shamefully) like the fact that Guided by Voices remained my secret gang of lovable losers despite the band's attempt at making the big time, I'll temper that by saying I was rooting for the band at the same time. If anyone deserves critical and commercial acclaim, it is certainly Robert Pollard. I would have been content to revel in the glory of my 7" singles, knowing the fair weather fans were only hearing the band at its most polished and palatable.

Alas, any worry about losing my favorite band to the mainstream was allayed when the masses rejected the great singles on Do the Collapse, none perhaps more perfect for radio than "Things I Will Keep." The song is a bounty of hooks, it has a chorus that can be molded to be seen as uplifting, it's short and never lags and it is as compressed and shiny as any hit of the past decade. All that and it's actually a really, really good song. While "Teenage FBI" was too good to be a novelty hit, "Hold on Hope" a bit too maudlin to pass as a power ballad and "Surgical Focus" too, um, surgically focused, "Things I Will Keep" seemed like the band's best shot at a bona fide hit. When it didn't even make a dent in the public consciousness, I knew GBV was mine to keep forever.

An Unmarketed Product

"An Unmarketed Product" is a concise little blast of power-chords and drums at the end of Do the Collapse. It doesn't exactly fit, but it's an interesting raw coda to Guided by Voices' most-produced album. One might expect that it's another self-referential tune from the pen of Robert Pollard, a thinly veiled commentary on his band's music. A close look at the lyrics, however, seems to suggest that Pollard is actually referring to a product in a store. "How do these things come in to our lives so obtrusively? Why do they change their prices so accordingly?"

Musically it's the kind of riff that Doug Gillard can toss off in his sleep, with the rest of the band in lockstep beside him. Pollard likely came up with the lyrics on the fly (if not, he shouldn't tell anyone). It's a bracing injection of energy that nicely reinvigorates the listener as the album closes, but it offers little more than that.

Much Better Mr. Buckles

Without ever really paying attention to the lyrics, I always figured this song from Do the Collapse was about a cat. Aren't most cats called "Mr. something-or-other"? Of course, the lyrics would seem to throw a wrench in that analysis, as you'd have a hard time shoehorning any of this into a tale about a pet.

Instead, this chugging little rocker seems to be another in the long series of songs from Robert Pollard where the lyrics were chosen because they sound good carrying the melody he crafted. The best I can tell, and this is simply a guess, this has to do with lazy co-workers who duck out of work early. Pollard mentions that "the weak ones of a shifting ethic are packing up," while he wants to know, in the chorus, when Mr. Buckles decides to go, saying "the kind nod of this employment wishes you well." The second verse mentions that a "sick list of a cryptic print is whited out," which may have something to do with this idea of leaving work under false pretenses.

If I'm at all right in this reading, it is certainly the most rocking song about absenteeism in the workplace, if not the only. Doug Gillard and Nate Farley rock heavy riffs for much of the song, while Gillard offers one of his tastefully fleet-fingered flights on the solo. The whole thing clocks in at a brisk 2:24.

Liquid Indian

The way Robert Pollard writes songs, coming up with a snippet here and a snippet there, often fusing things together to come up with a whole, it’s no surprise that many Guided by Voices songs feel different from verse to chorus and back. It occasionally feels forced, but in the case of “Liquid Indian” from Do the Collapse, it works.

Do the Collapse is far and away the band’s most controversial disc. Die-hards hate Ric Ocasek’s slick production, critics decried what they saw as a sprawling lack of focus and the marketplace ignored what was an obvious attempt to join the big leagues. I find it flawed but full of fantastic songs. Sometimes these songs fight against Ocasek’s sheen, at others they march in lockstep to achieve sonic brilliance simply beyond the grasp of Tobin Sprout’s four-track.

“Liquid Indian” is a fine example. So, in this song we have a strange, herky-jerky verse that even by Pollard standards feels like random lines pulled from a notebook: “Arcane offices delivering deluxe information: The Quaker's Seal of Approval. More movies less Trivial Pursuit.” But it also includes some of Pollard’s most arresting imagery, with his “born-again boot-stomping witch humper” leading the pack.

And that’s all before that gorgeously manufactured chorus, which wrings as much melody, harmony and soaring verve as can be found in the two words of the title. It’s a swirling mass of Pollard atop Pollard atop Pollard, all meshed with a swell of keyboards. As if that’s not enough, Pollard even adds some completely uncharacteristic “waa woo hoos” to the mix at the tail end of each chorus. That all drops away as it re-enters the verse, the sweeping keyboards replaced by Doug Gillard’s echoing, stabbing guitar notes. These sound like parts from two different songs, but Pollard and Ocasek do a good job of fusing the two, each verse building musically toward that chorus. The result is a pure studio creation -- the band only played it live eight times just after the release of the album before retiring it for good.

So, what is “Liquid Indian”? It’s easy to assume it’s some sort of alcohol or potion, particularly given the witch reference and the intros to each chorus. At the close of the first verse, Pollard sings that “the skips and flips are taking sips of…” while in the second he sings that “we've coupons and stamps and valuable cramps from…” It turns out, however (and perhaps everyone else already knew this), that Liquid Indian is a type of ink. Pollard often comes up with words and phrases that he uses out of context simply because they sound good, and this would seem to be a case of the practice.