Tomorrow Will Not Be Another Day

By now it's clear that Robert Pollard writes unconventional songs. Some are all verse, others seem to completely lack verses. "Tomorrow Will Not Be Another Day" feels like the latter. It's really all bridge and chorus. Heck, it even starts with the lone guitar solo, a tasty little lick that most would put somewhere toward the end of the song. Not Pollard. He starts there, then dives into the melody at a spot where a bridge would normally go, then slides into the chorus which has its own odd little tag.

Lyrically, it's a bit strange, but that's no surprise. It works best on the second run through the chorus:

Something better for you
Something better for me
To bringing us strong drinks and cheap gas
Expand your comfort zone
High and walk me home.

It's yet another strong pop song on an album I had somewhat dismissed (wrongly, it seems) as the underwhelming follow up to the masterful From a Compound Eye.

Give Up the Grape

In seeming contrast to the Isolation Drills track "How's My Drinking?" (let alone "Sister I Need Wine") in which Robert Pollard sings "I don't care about being sober" and pledges "I will never change" here he sings "Every morning when I suffer the break, tell my baby I will give up the grape." There is no indication, however, that his protagonist actually intends to give up wine. He ends that first verse with the line, "Other than that you know I'm all right," as if the promise to quit drinking is frequent, and unmet.

Later, he sings "I drink myself astray, from shadows of fantastic middle-earth. Other than that you know I'm all right." This guy is obviously dealing with some delusions, perhaps caused, and certainly not alleviated by booze.

The song is a rare instance in Pollard's back catalog of the lyric not really fitting the music. Todd Tobias has crafted a good groove that pushes Pollard to sound a bit aggressive, loudly proclaiming the opening lines. Yet the character of which he sings sounds like a stoner, someone lost in another world who assures his significant other that he'll change, with no real intention to do so.

Rhoda Rhoda

"Rhoda Rhoda" is the kind of effortless pop song that Robert Pollard used to toss off in his sleep, but by the time of his solo CD, Normal Happiness, such breezy, carefree pop seemed refreshingly quaint. No one with a passable familiarity with Pollard's back catalog would suggest that he's suddenly become a noise-hungry experimenter -- just listen to Same Place the Fly Got Smashed -- but the outlet afforded by his Fading Captain series certainly seemed to give him license to worry about entertaining himself first, and offering hooks to captivate listeners second.

The result is a recent catalog full of more challenging songs and light on the short, hooky tunes that so entranced listeners circa Bee Thousand. His most successful releases, such as the masterful From a Compound Eye, strike a nice balance between those two sides. Still, it was heartening to hear that Normal Happiness was being billed by the man himself as the poppiest thing he'd ever done. Giving a listen to "Rhoda Rhoda" and other hook-filled songs here, one would be hard-pressed to argue, but taking the disc in full reveals it to be a fairly typical collection of modern-day Pollardiana. Uncle Bob writes and records the melody and lyrics, and his main foil, Todd Tobias (the Rhoda to Pollard's Mary, I guess), fills in the rest of the canvas.

With "Rhoda Rhoda," one assumes Tobias had little room to maneuver, as Pollard's strummed guitar and sweet vocal line fairly dominate proceedings. It's the kind of song that would likely stand up as strongly as a solo demo. Tobias adds drums and perhaps bass (things are a bit fuzzed-out so it's hard to tell) and little more, but it's enough to flesh out one of Pollard's strongest melodies in recent memory.

As for what it all means? Well, as usual, not much. It's easy to read self-reference into Pollard's lyrics, particularly with lines like "Everyone's talking to me, 'take a break from the year's bundle,'" which seems like Pollard acknowledging the oft-heard criticism of his ultra-prolific nature. In the end, it doesn't really matter. One can look for deep meaning, but as Pollard has often revealed, the lyrics are simply words that sound good carrying the melody, and in the case of "Rhoda Rhoda," they sound mighty fine indeed.