Beat Your Wings

"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.

Dead Cloud

I've found that when Robert Pollard's demos have been available for listening, I usually like the demo as much as the finished song, if not more. Rarely does the band version do damage to Pollard's original intent, but his melodies are usually strong enough to stand alone even without the additional accompaniment.

Then there is the case of "Dead Cloud." It's a song I usually skip on Earthquake Glue. Sure, the chorus' hook is decent enough, as the stuttering guitars give way to a nice interlude over which Pollard sings "She said to send the sunlight to me." But that's not enough to counterbalance what is at best bland and at worst annoying over the rest of the song's run time.

The demo for the song, found on the vinyl-only Edison's Demos, is pleasant in comparison. Shorn of the aimless bombast of the full-band version, Pollard's intentions are somewhat clearer, though even if executed to perfection I'd still find this track middling at best.

Mix Up the Satellite

Robert Pollard's Edison's Demos disc, gathering his solo demos for the Earthquake Glue album, is a fascinating look at his creative process. The most revelatory thing it reveals is that despite the talents of his band, he often brings a fully realized song arrangement to the studio.

"Mix Up the Satellite" is a good example. While the finished product is more fleshed out than the demo -- with keyboards, bass and drums -- there is nothing there that wasn't already at least hinted at on the demo. Pollard found a sturdy guitar line, fused a melody to it and off he went. Everything else is atmosphere and window dressing.

Lyrically, he offers some nice imagery, with a spacey, 2001-esque feel in lines like "wheel of the sunrise, feel as its rolling by." The bridge is a marvel of concision: "To save us light, they gave us night."

My Son, My Secretary, My Country

Not many people can compete with Robert Pollard when it comes to writing songs that shift from the softest to loudest dynamics in the shortest amount of time. Few songs rival "A Crick Uphill" in this department, but "My Son, My Secretary, My Country" is certainly Top 5.

The song begins with a quiet, mournful horn section that sounds exactly like what it is: An eighth grade band, in this case, the Esther Dennis Middle School Eighth Grade Band from Dayton. After about 45 seconds of this, Pollard enters, accompanying himself on acoustic guitar.

with your mission wilting,
and your kids sulking,
happy birthday Mr. sink.
throw your flowers in the river and drink.

From there things build steadily. Pollard's guitar, still the only instrument, becomes clearer and more forceful. It is joined by a cacophonous guitar strum midway through the bridge/chorus (in a song where the lyric takes only a minute or so, it's sometimes hard to discern.

He rattles off some great rhyming lines as the song comes to a head:

for the sketch of explorers,
and the hot air annoyers,
good men destoyers,
future employers,
cowboys and lawyers,
and we all will be warriors.

Closing with a rousing, final, "Rahhhhhhhhh!"

The demo found on Edison's Demos doesn't include the horn section, instead starting when Pollard and his guitar do. Vocally, he escalates things a bit at the points during which the song's instrumental layers kick in on the finished version, though his ending "Rahhhh!" seems neutered when compared to the multi-track war cry that ends the song on Earthquake Glue, leading into the following track, "I'll Replace You With Machines."

Secret Star

On Guided by Voices farewell tour, The Electrifying Conclusion, Robert Pollard seemed even more self-reflective than usual. At one stop, for a taping of the public television show "Austin City Limits," Pollard used a quiet, transitional moment during the song "Secret Star" to comment on the band's tenure. "We were the kings of lo-fi," he says, following that with the somewhat contradictory statement, "In the early '90s, when people were staring at their shoes, and we brought back rock 'n' roll, Guided by Voices did, it was a good thing."

No argument there, with either statement, in fact. Though it is amazing to think of how far the kings of lo-fi came, how perfectly the band in its last days finally resembled the hook-filled British invasion rock that Pollard had in his head. "Secret Star" is a fine example. It's a song that could have appeared on any of GBV's albums, but it is the latter-day lineup that gets its hands on it, and that's to the benefit of the song.

The demo reveals that the song was cobbled together from different parts. It begins with a straight-ahead pop sound for nearly two minutes. It's catchy enough, but fairly unremarkable. Then the band drops back and some of producer Todd Tobias' sound collages take over. From there it comes back up in a bridge that seems ripped from one of the narrative-driving interludes in Tommy: "A spinster kept checking for a special clock remover, but now we're out of time. Secret star of heavenly bundles, firmly confirmed yesterday," Pollard sings. Then the song erupts into a full-blown mid-period Who rocker.

The demo reflects this with several separate and distinct parts. Particularly in that last section, you can just imagine the band salivating over the possibilities, Nate Farley seeing himself windmilling the chords on stage, Kevin March feeling the spirit of Keith Moon as he bashes away at the drums.

By the time the song reached the studio, it had become a polished, well-constructed composition, one that puts the listener in the crowd, watching the band bear down while Pollard twirls his microphone.

Send no more joy,
No more light,
No more danger,
It will always come.
To wish for you to fall,
To wish for you to burn,
To wish for your return.

Though I'm reading too much into it, those last lines read like a synopsis of the "build them up, knock them down" mentality of celebrity these days. Bands succeed because of the joy, light and danger they offer to fans, but those things, once familiar, are deemed trite or tired, and the wishes for the once-exalted to fall and burn are expressed. Once that wish is granted, of course, we move into "don't know what you've got until it's gone" mode, and the wish is for the band to return, the knowledge made clear that something familiar is often better than nothing at all.

Apology in Advance

According to the Guided by Voices Database, I was at the last show where this song was performed live. That's probably for the best, for while "Apology in Advance" is a perfectly fine song, it falls so far down the rankings that its inclusion in a future setlist would only displace something better.

The song is built on a bland riff and a fairly average Robert Pollard vocal and lyric. The most interesting musical element comes about halfway through. Doug Gillard offers a a nice guitar line that drives the verse right before the bridge, Pollard singing "And the nights too bright to hide from sight, so I better get things right" as Gillard spins off twanging little riffs.

That seems to ignite Pollard, who keeps the bridge going for much of the rest of the song, offering the most interesting lyrical content of the entire piece, tossing off intricate and increasingly clever lines.

Been around the block I even threw up one street over,
absorbed in the holding cell all blemishes exposed.
with the plastic hand, of man I can.

stepping up I go limp at the sound of woman laughing,
leaving me to speculate the odds of one last chance.
to apologize in advance.

It adds up to a decent song that, if its author hadn't penned several hundred that were superior, might not feel like filler at the end of an album.

I'll Replace You With Machines

Robert Pollard's limited vinyl release Edison's Demos offers an interesting window into the Guided by Voices creative process that helps to distinguish the contributions of his bandmates and producer Todd Tobias. By showing how the songs on Earthquake Glue began, it's easy to see how they evolved. And that album, thanks to its similarity sonically with Pollard's later solo albums helmed by Tobias, show it be the GBV album where the producer's touch is most easily discerned,

"I'll Replace You With Machines" may be the best example of that process. On Edison's Demos, the song finds Pollard strumming on acoustic guitar the same riffs that Doug Gillard and Nate Farley play on the Earthquake Glue version. It's quiet -- no surprise given it's acoustic guitar and voice setup -- but even imagining it amplified, it's hard to imagine the clanking, churning rocker it would become.

Part of that credit goes to the band, of course. The song chugs along much like many of the songs on the band's post TVT albums, the band in tight lockstep as it marches to the conclusion. But there are more things going on here than one normally expects from a GBV song. As if foreshadowing what life will be like when Pollard has replaced us all with machines, Tobias layers on the sounds of a factory, Kevin March's drums augmented by aural pistons firing and other noises that create a near-cacophony of disorientation over which Pollard sings.

The change is startling. On the demo, Pollard sounds tentative. "I'll replace you with machines. I can't face you," he sings, as if admitting that he would rather deal with a machine than converse with a person. On the album, his surroundings practically force him to be defiant. Instead of the concession of the demo, his words are a boast of sorts.

It's an interesting bit of sonic onomatopoeia, and it's easily the more rocking of the two versions. But I can't help thinking that all of Tobias' augmentations, coupled with the band's unsubtle punch, have neutered the song a bit, shoehorning Pollard's words into a meaning he didn't intend.

The Best of Jill Hives

At their root, the best Guided by Voices songs are driven by Robert Pollard's vocal melodies. Plenty of the band's songs have fantastically interesting and catchy instrumentation, of course, but no one hums a GBV riff the way they do one of Pollard's vocal lines. "The Best of Jill Hives" is perfect evidence of this. Built on little more than a rumbling bass line and some strummed guitar, the song is the catchiest thing on Earthquake Glue and is among Pollard's best singles.

Polalrd had done this before. "The Official Ironmen Rally Song" from Under the Bushes, Under the Stars is built on similar minimalism, largely kept together by his vocal. Sometimes such songs need several repeat listens before their charms set in, time for the listener to realize that this primary hook is really the only hook, and that the absence of extraneous sound is intended, all the better to expose that gorgeous centerpiece. That is not the case with "The Best of Jill Hives," however. It lodges itself in the ear immediately, a song that almost seems like a cover because of its instant classic feel.

It sounds like a narrative story until one actually listens to the lyrics and realizes that Pollard isn't really saying anything more than is required to carry the melody, and that Jill Hives is a made up name that simply sounds good (and that rhymes with "come alive"). Only on the chorus does he actually seem to say something: "I don't know where you find your nerve, I don't know how you choose your words/ speak the ones that suit you worse, keep you grounded, sad and cursed, circle the ones that come alive, save them for the best of Jill Hives."