Lightshow

I have declared From a Compound Eye Robert Pollard's best solo album (and, depending on the day, the best, most complete thing he has ever done). As such, I have listened to it more than almost any other album of his. So, I was surprised when "Lightshow" popped up on shuffle and I didn't recognize it.

At first, I thought that was because it was somewhat unremarkable. Later, as the hook insinuated itself in my mind, I realized it was because the song is simply not among the dozen or so completely boss tunes on the disc, and thus hasn't had the staying power that those have enjoyed.

Hearing it here, out of context and unexpected, was a treat. It's a good song; not great, particularly given its surroundings, but it fits very well with the rest of the album and, about halfway through, takes on a sort of soaring majesty that gives it a solid hook.

Now, for the deep stuff. This song seems completely autobiographical.

In his mirror a laughing king
his courtyard crawling
howling clowns at his side
there are no blanks in this boy's rifle
cocked and loaded
fist and fingers white

If that isn't Pollard, I don't know what is. The laughing king surrounded by howling clowns. And, we all know Pollard's self-worth is high, so the notion that he has "no blanks" in his rifle fits.

back and forth
when now they bring his cape, crown and mask
blazing heavy
angels all around him
such paradise would surely
make him frown and fall

This is harder, but it still works. Post Bee Thousand, Pollard got what he wanted, the ability to perform for a living his figurative "cape, crown and mask." But, stardom eluded him, that "paradise" making his "frown and fall."

he glows
exposed
tranformed
he knows

tries rockin' and spits up something foul
no stopping the kicking stillborn now
'cus they're men first
and they grow up fast on the side
in the lightshow
where there's no place left you can hide

This, again, takes a bit of shoehorning to make work, but lets say that the spitting up of something foul and the kicking stillborns refer to sidemen who have gone their own way. "They grow up fast on the side in the lightshow," he sings, as if admitting that he continually needed fresh blood in Guided by Voices because he shed sidemen looking to do their own thing too often.

Gold

An artist with as many surefire pop nuggets as Robert Pollard would be expected to front-load his albums, sticking an uber-catchy track at the beginning to hook listeners. While that is often the case, it's certainly not a rule, and "Gold" from Pollard's first major post Guided by Voices release is a good example.

The track is fairly strange, given the rather muscular psych-pop that populates most of the disc. It takes a long while to get going, has no chorus per se, and forces the listener to concentrate. In other words, it's the perfect opener for a double album designed to relaunch the career of an artist who promises to explore the sounds of pop, punk, prog and psych.

The song begins with a guitar strummed through a tremolo effect. Another guitar adds a bit of bass, then Pollard begins to sing a bit lethargically --perhaps, given the subject matter, resignedly -- "Tell us, oh lies again," followed a bit later by the great line, "and I never ever met a day I didn't like, but there I get squat."

As the first verse closes, the song builds, with some percussion adding a plodding beat and some additional keyboards and guitar rewarding a listen through headphones. Pollard's vocal takes on an urgency here as he sings, "And I may feel justice in the water; and I may just try looking down everybody!"

The gold in this case is for sale, as Pollard shouts (in character), "Gold, Baby! You may set foot upon this godless terrain."

By the end of the song, with the original guitar strum almost completely subsumed by the other sounds around it, things have taken on a swirling sheen of psychedelia that gives way to the angular punked-up thrust of the short track "Field Jacket Blues," the bouncing pop of "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" and (you guessed it), the slightly proggy "Flowering Orphan" that follow.

I Surround You Naked

I've gone on record calling From a Compound Eye Robert Pollard's strongest album (with Guided by Voices or otherwise). There are albums I like better, but top to bottom, I feel this is his strongest collection. "I Surround You Naked" is one reason for its success. It's not the best on the disc, but it would surely be among the top two or three tracks on most of Pollard's subsequent solo albums.

The song starts with an insistent guitar riff that doesn't let up over the course of the song, driving Pollard to stay on point with his vocal throughout. This pushes the hooks to the fore, and there are plenty. The verses could stand alone just fine, but the chorus here packs additional punch to elevate the song melodically.

Lyrically, Pollard is talking about a friend on the edge who seems to need, for lack of a better term, a good hug. Of course, the better term is to "surround you naked," which may or may not be Pollard's intent here. Things are a bit disjointed: "Come on can break you in your head/ anyone can make you well/ and have you gone to get your go," he sings.

He goes on to say his friend can "call a shrink to show you everyone can be so damaging," but he doesn't seem to think that's the solution, offering to surround the person naked. It's a phrase that has sexual connotations, and Pollard certainly wouldn't be above that, but that doesn't feel right here. This is more about support than carnality: "So you may grow in my heart/ in my heart/ and my heart is getting light/ careless one."

The best line comes late in the second verse, where Pollard drops a bit of relationship science on the listener: "Force x distance = far away." If Einstein wrote greeting cards...

Field Jacket Blues

I always forget about "Field Jacket Blues" when I put From a Compound Eye on the CD player. "Gold" is easy to remember, a passive-aggressive opener that makes you sit up and listen, while the third track, "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" is a bouncing pop song that is instantly memorable. But "Field Jacket Blues" is a strange tune that nonetheless serves perhaps its greatest purpose as a bridge between those two tracks.

The song is only about 1:45 long, and at first it seems like it will be one of Pollard's quirky little experiments. An alien-sounding guitar line wiggles its way out of the speakers, followed by some tentatively strummed power chords. Then it repeats. On the second go round, the chords sustain and a rocking 4/4 drum beat rises. The guitar chords become a riff and then Pollard's vocal appears.

Play now.
No one ever treat you so bad like you treat me so bad.
Pray now.
Pray.
No one ever send you away.

The guitar riff fades and the alien guitar line returns, followed by the tentative chords. It's like some broadcast pulled in on a Martian radio station. The typical, droning tune is superseded by a blast of Pollard coming in from the heavens, only to reassert itself after a few seconds: "We now return to our regularly scheduled program."

It's too much at this point to wish that Pollard always recognized the potential of his shards and fragments, but still I wonder what the song could have been had the burst of vocal been the first verse of a song that had a stronger hook in the chorus. Ah, dare to dream.

Blessed in an Open Head

Sometimes a song feels so right that you're convinced it is a cover or that it lifts from something else. "Blessed in an Open Head" was like this for me, a song that is so complete that it just seems to have always been around.

I suppose this has a lot to do with the main riff that drives the song, though that's really just one of several elements that work so very well together. It's a tightly written and arranged song, one where the keyboard touches and production of Todd Tobias fit very organically with Pollard's creation.

Beyond that, it feels like a true rallying cry with a bumper sticker-worthy sentiment in the chorus: "Find a moment in your time... Live the moment when you find." To read into it further, it seems to advocate having an open mind, something that yields rewards, according to Pollard:

You'll find you skin beyond the reach
of those who can and those who preach

All of this adds up to a blissful 3 minutes of pop perfection... with a message. It's like an after school special of rock.

I'm a Strong Lion

Robert Pollard has mentioned in a few interviews that he has been approached to write commercial jingles, and on the surface, it makes sense. His songs are short, extremely catchy and, when he wants, contain very clever lyrics that lodge in the brain. All are traits of successful marketing music.

As he has admitted, however, he's largely unwilling to submit to the whims of advertisers, and thus would have trouble ever crafting something to someone else's specs. In addition, as infectious as his songs can be, they're off-kilter enough that they don't really hold mass appeal (any look at Guided by Voices' record sales would confirm that).

Something like "I'm a Strong Lion" might be the exception. It's a compact little gem, a minute of solid hooks. From the bouncing keyboard line that opens the track through the rousing verse and chorus and through the rocking finish, it's nearly perfect. Even the lyrics would need little tinkering. Excise the spiritual component -- "I'm a strong lion, been trying, the lord likes me that way" -- and you're left with a brief tale of determination. It's not far from the real thing to something that could sell window cleaner.

"'That's it' some'll say, can't see too well past another day" can easily become "'That's it' some'll say, can't see too well out this grimy pane" and Pollard is off, pimping Strong Lion window cleaner, making money hand over fist (with a few royalties coming my way, of course).

The Right Thing

One of the most interesting releases of Robert Pollard's career was Edison's Demos, a vinyl-only LP that featured the solo demos Pollard knocked out in a day for the album that became Earthquake Glue. Here, you could hear exactly how the songs started life, comparing that with the finished recordings done by the band with producer Todd Tobias. Most of the time, the kernel of Pollard's demo was still very identifiable, his initial idea simply augmented by the other four players and the producer. With Tobias helming any number of Pollard projects that start with demos -- from Psycho and the Birds which feature Tobias's work directly atop Pollard's demos, to Pollard's most recent solo albums, which find Tobias using demos as a template to create a song bed for Pollard's vocals -- it would be interesting to hear more demos to see how the songs change -- or don't -- during the creative process.

With "The Right Thing" from From a Compound Eye, it seems as if we get the best of both worlds. The song begins with Pollard solo, a recording that sounds like what it most likely is: the songwriter getting down an idea with a minimum of fuss. There is a two-string guitar riff and a shakily sung melody. The words are there, but he doesn't seem entirely sure of them, slurring his way through with more intent on capturing the melody than the lyrics. This goes on for about a minute, then Tobias's take kicks in. Distorted guitar chords taking the place of Pollard's plucked notes. Drums, keyboards and bass are added to the mix, giving the song a beefier profile, but that core guitar figure and melody are still the focus. That initial hook -- the chorus of "I am high, too small in a way. I'm high, you cry and I die" -- while tentative on the demo, is enough to carry a four minute-plus song, as Tobias maintains the groove for a full minute after Pollard stops singing.

Dancing Girls and Dancing Men

After writing up 70+ songs to this point, I can draw a few conclusions. As poppy as Robert Pollard's output is by and large, there are few of his songs that I would define as "jaunty." A search of the My Impression Now archives finds only two instances where I have done so: "Red Whips and Miracles" and "The Ids Are Alright." Add "Dancing Girls and Dancing Men" to that short list.

It's a catchy, and yes, jaunty tune built on a beat that would make the Strokes proud, with bouncing keyboards and a pulsing bass line over which Pollard sings in a gentlemanly tone about, it seems at first, dancing. Of course, nothing is as it seems with Pollard, and while lines like "Dancing girls could us a break I must confess, dancing men could do for oxygen express" would seem to describe a rather frantic bit of dancing -- wedding reception being a decent guess, given the reference to a bride early on, or perhaps a dance marathon of some sort -- the rest of it doesn't seem to be about dancing at all.

As usual, sometimes it's best to not think too much about what Pollard is trying to get across and simply enjoy the way in which he does it.

Conquerer of the Moon

I have gravitated here toward Robert Pollard's shorter songs, reasoning that they're easier to write about. Of course, with Pollard, the term "short" is relative. When your average song length is about 2 minutes (anyone ever figure that out?), a minute-long song isn't necessarily that short.

As Guided by Voices progressed, Pollard seemed more willing to stretch things out. He formed a band around him that could actually keep it together through three verses, a bridge and a chorus, and talents like Doug Gillard were more than happy to lay down a solo when needed. That coincided with a new patience on Pollard's part -- he seemed willing to hold on to a song and write the second and third verse rather than simply record the verse and chorus and move on.

By the time of his first post-GBV solo album, From a Compound Eye, he was moving confidently toward songs that could comfortably be called suites. Rather than break off a snippet and call it a song, he was finding ways to fuse them together to create longer, more interesting works. "Conqueror of the Moon" is just such a song. It's not the best song on FaCE, but it is the most ambitious. In the space of five short minutes he offers a track with the kind of variation shown in the mini-rock operas of his heroes, the Who; it's as close as he's come to penning his own "Happy Jack."

He starts with a moody guitar swirl over which he sings "I like the sound of breaking glass, 'cause it's too loud. Get it out with your knife," before dropping into a sugary groove for a bit less than a minute. That ends as the song re-enters a different sort of swirl, this one a trippier bridge to the next, harder rocking section driven by collaborator Todd Tobias' driving power chords. From there Pollard slows things down, giving the song the epic sweep of "Weed King." He's note done, however. If the song feels like a retrospective tour through his various sounds, then it's only right that it end with a bit of lo-fi acoustic picking with mumbled vocals. By the time it's over, Pollard has run through as many great ideas as can be found on any Guided by Voices Bee Thousand-era EP, and offers them all in one longer song instead of five short ones.