Rich Man's Girl

"Rich Man's Girl" starts sounding like a Robert Pollard demo, with Pollard strumming an acoustic guitar into his boombox and singing a slightly garbled melody. That's likely the genesis of the track, but instead of Todd Tobias dressing it up and calling it a Psycho and the Birds track, it's Chris Slusarenko who gets the honors, making it a Takeovers track.

While it would be nice if Pollard would have recorded a better vocal rather than rely on the lo-fi based (and maybe even, gasp, sing a harmony), His skeletal track is sturdy enough to support the embellishments Slusarenko drapes on it, creating a claustrophobic little slab of psychedelia. Sluskarenko cooks up a great little snaky guitar line that pops up here and there, with a great fuzzy lo-end blast that drives it from bridge to chorus late in the track. He does just enough here to get the point across, keeping things a bit dirty, which stands in sharp contrast with Tobias' bright productions. It's a nice change of pace, and further proof to my mind that he's the more sympathetic foil for Pollard when it comes to collaboration (as any comparison between the Boston Spaceships and Pollard's recent solo albums would prove).

Instigator

Without checking the band name associated with the Robert Pollard side project that recorded this, one might think it's a Psycho and the Birds track. It sounds lo-fi, with Pollard's vocals sounding a bit mumbly, as if he's unsure of the lyric. But it's simply a little ditty created by Chris Slusarenko for the Takeovers, a catchy fragment built on a walking bass line, a ramshackle drum kit beat and a slight, snaky organ line. It's enough to give Pollard a nudge in the right direction, and his falsetto melody fits very well, making it a perfect B side. Slusarenko seems to acknowledge the potential in the track about halfway through, dropping enough distorted guitar to keep things interesting the third or fourth time through the short riff. The whole thing is done before it has a chance to grate, clocking in at less than two minutes.