Anything less that twenty tracks on an album by Robert Pollard is expectedly referred to as an EP. Given the prolific history of his hundred (not joking) previous incarnations derived from and including his former band Guided By Voices, one might scream foul play in seeing a mere ten tracks on his most recent LP release The Crawling Distance. Despite the quantity, it is an odd relief to feel reasonably fulfilled by mix of the liberties taken on his twenty second solo album (still not joking) and first of 2009.
The songs are all finely rooted in a mad scientist style of basement tape rock that has been Pollard’s way of recording ever since he was a teacher in Dayton, Ohio. Even so, going solo has allow Pollard a kind of reverse experimentalism (for him) with cleaner production and well-made song structures in using journeys instead of non linear jabs; initially flirted with on GBV’s Do The Collapse. Part of those structures may be due to the peculiar set up of production of his solo style. Pollard is credited for writing all the songs, yet in the process of fleshing them out the album could clearly have been labeled a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias, who plays bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and produced the album.
The title of The Crawling Distance may be in reference to the fact that all but two songs clock in, around, or above three minutes; minor opuses given the standard history of Pollard’s knack for brevity and freedom of form. However on this solo work, Pollard neither strays far from normal time signatures, nor deviates far from traditional song framing. Most notably on the presence of a fair share of simple and breezy ballads (It’s Easy, No Island, Red Cross Vegas Night) whose arrangements effectually underscore and lift the songs to a level of a kind of sonic poetry; containing lyrics that encapsulate an air of cock-eyed wisdom from an outspoken uncle who speaks in mixed King Crimson-like mystic metaphors but does it in the attitude of The Who.
Happily, to offset the meter, there are shares of quirky delights that find resonance and fascinate the curiosity. “By Silence Be Destroyed” reeks of garage rock with an off the shoulder, blasé resignation. While the masculine anthem of “Cave Zone” is a tonally barbarous yelp for sanctuary both bold and fragile that's thematically worthy of Victor Hugo novel. Yet, it is the warm, empowering, and rather normal “The Butler Stands For All Of Us” that most effectively represents Pollard’s signature style, representative of the mood of GBV’s Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. The song includes the phrase: “It pays to know who you are/Cuz that’s who you are.” Not only knowing who he is, but being able to mine a career from writing, recording, and performing on his own terms, there isn’t a description more emblematically defining Robert Pollard than his own lyric.
Aaron Simms
http://www.robertpollard.net/
The songs are all finely rooted in a mad scientist style of basement tape rock that has been Pollard’s way of recording ever since he was a teacher in Dayton, Ohio. Even so, going solo has allow Pollard a kind of reverse experimentalism (for him) with cleaner production and well-made song structures in using journeys instead of non linear jabs; initially flirted with on GBV’s Do The Collapse. Part of those structures may be due to the peculiar set up of production of his solo style. Pollard is credited for writing all the songs, yet in the process of fleshing them out the album could clearly have been labeled a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Todd Tobias, who plays bass, drums, guitar, keyboard, and produced the album.
The title of The Crawling Distance may be in reference to the fact that all but two songs clock in, around, or above three minutes; minor opuses given the standard history of Pollard’s knack for brevity and freedom of form. However on this solo work, Pollard neither strays far from normal time signatures, nor deviates far from traditional song framing. Most notably on the presence of a fair share of simple and breezy ballads (It’s Easy, No Island, Red Cross Vegas Night) whose arrangements effectually underscore and lift the songs to a level of a kind of sonic poetry; containing lyrics that encapsulate an air of cock-eyed wisdom from an outspoken uncle who speaks in mixed King Crimson-like mystic metaphors but does it in the attitude of The Who.
Happily, to offset the meter, there are shares of quirky delights that find resonance and fascinate the curiosity. “By Silence Be Destroyed” reeks of garage rock with an off the shoulder, blasé resignation. While the masculine anthem of “Cave Zone” is a tonally barbarous yelp for sanctuary both bold and fragile that's thematically worthy of Victor Hugo novel. Yet, it is the warm, empowering, and rather normal “The Butler Stands For All Of Us” that most effectively represents Pollard’s signature style, representative of the mood of GBV’s Under the Bushes, Under the Stars. The song includes the phrase: “It pays to know who you are/Cuz that’s who you are.” Not only knowing who he is, but being able to mine a career from writing, recording, and performing on his own terms, there isn’t a description more emblematically defining Robert Pollard than his own lyric.
Aaron Simms
http://www.robertpollard.net/
Posts
