Robert Pollard-Mania! #49: HOLD ON HOPE EP

Guided by Voices
Hold on Hope EP
2000, TVT Records

Back in the video store days, if you wanted to rent sleazy B-movies you had to pull the tape or DVD off a shelf and take it to a cashier, who then got a good look at exactly the kind of creep who rents Erotic Gladiator or Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers—and that kind of creep was ME.

Today, I’m old and wouldn’t give a damn, but back then I was young and fragile and hideously self-conscious (especially if a girl was working the counter). I also wasn’t very bright and I somehow felt less embarassed if I mixed a “respectable” movie or two in with the garbage that I really wanted to see.

So, on an average night at the video store, I might go up to the counter with Bikini Slave Girls II and a movie like Gandhi. 

Looking back, I’m not sure what statement I was making with this. Maybe the cashier would think that I was really there to rent Gandhi, but Bikini Slave Girls II just happened to tumble off the shelf and land in my hands?

“What’s this? Bikini Slave Girls II? How did this get here? What a strange turn of events! You know what, though? I’ll be a madcap and rent it anyway! Please, seriously, go to no trouble to restock. I don’t want to be a problem here. It’s not your fault that this movie accidentally fell down on me. This building clearly needs foundation work. Bikini Slave Girls II. Fine. I’ll watch it. Maybe it will have some interesting mise-en-scene. Here’s my $6 and please don’t think that I’m a weird pervert.”

I was hoping to make up for the embarassing thing with something that’s not embarassing.

And that’s EXACTLY how GBV give us “Hold on Hope” on this record.

I ain’t NEVER seen a single or an EP like this one.

“Hold on Hope” was supposed to be a hit, right? It was supposed to be a major song. It was supposed to be what broke this band big. Every milkman was gonna be singing it. Every process server was gonna be humming it. Schoolchildren and housewives and the whole US Navy were going to become GBV fans to the tune of “Hold on Hope”.

So, why does the Hold on Hope EP, a theoretical showcase for this watershed ballad, pile on a whopping EIGHT other songs and then only cough up “Hold on Hope” at the very end?

I know why. Robert Pollard was just doing what I did at the video store when I was 20. He was renting Gandhi… and Bikini Slave Girls II. He was covering up a not-so-proud moment.

Pollard doesn’t like “Hold on Hope”. He said it in interviews years later. He said it in Jim Greer’s 2005 book about the band. He said it in Matthew Cutter’s 2018 book. He implied it when he didn’t put it on GBV’s Best of compilation that came out in 2003.

But he wasn’t saying it in early 2000 (at least not publically), when the band were playing the song at every show and pushing the new album hard, but you could already tell here. “Hold on Hope” is not what GBV are about, this EP says. Killer anthems like “Underground Initiations” and “Avalanche Aminos” are more like it.

This little nine-song disc is the sleeper classic of the TVT years. It’s all about pop songs, maybe the best ones from this period. Some real monsters got left off of Do the Collapse for whatever crazy reason and they’re right here dying to be loved. If Pollard ceded to Ric Ocasek’s hitmaking wisdom for Do the Collapse, this EP seems to be where Pollard’s own instincts rule. He had only scraps and outtakes to work with, but he’s good at that sorta thing.

“Underground Initiations” kicks it off with a roar. It’s one of Pollard’s expert anthems, punchy and uplifting and with perfect moments for twirling the mic. “Let it go/ You don’t need it anyhow”. At the time, that line sounded to me like Pollard’s kiss-off to his indie cred. A few years later, it sounded like Pollard’s anticipation of the major label thing not working out. Twenty years later, it sounds like a universal call to any lost soul out there to let go of their useless burden, whatever that is. A stupid job that’s easily replaced. A source of unnecessary drama. An addiction. Let it go. You don’t need it anyhow.

Pollard acquits himself further with the Byrds-y beauty of “Interest Position”. Big, earth-shaker guitars here. This song conjures up a gentle rain accompanied by some real angry thunder.

This whole EP is gonna rock. You can already tell in the first two songs. They’re a perfect jab-and-uppercut combination.

And the hits keep on comin’…

We already talked about “Fly Into Ashes” when we talked about the “Surgical Focus” single, but here it is again for the kids without turntables. We  also already talked about “Tropical Robots” when we talked about the “Teenage FBI” single, but here it is again for the US kids who don’t buy imports. I don’t mind hearing them again. They belong here.

In the fifth slot is “A Crick Uphill” and, in my little world, it’s a bigger song than “Hey Jude”. It’s among the greatest under-the-radar GBV songs of all-time. If I play it once, I’m playing it ten more times. “A Crick Uphill” is a lifeforce. This song could talk you (or rock you, rather) out of razoring your wrist. I will be singing it for the rest of my life. “Teenage FBI”? “Hold on Hope”? Why was TVT trying to set the world on fire with those while they NEGLECTED this masterpiece? It’s a 1960s-style pop overdose with a curious country-rock and gospel heart. It climaxes with boldly furious praise to Jesus. Okay, maybe it was a little old-fashioned for the time, but it’s still a classic. It reminds me of The Monkees. A great Mike Nesmith moment that never happened. A great Guided by Voices moment that did happen.

It’s a real show-stopper. Pollard could have ended this EP right there and I woulda been fine.

But there’s more…

For the cool-off we get a little rocker from the archives. It’s a previously lo-fi song performed with extra muscle. On Tonics & Twisted Chasers, it was called “Reptilian Beauty Secrets”. Here, it’s called “Idiot Princess”. Same song, bigger sound. According to GBVDB.com, this is just Pollard, John Shough and Kevin Fennell, so it probably dates back to ’96.

It’s also one of the few “dark” songs on this upbeat record.

There’s a curious theme to the Hold on Hope EP and it’s songs about motivation. You’re gonna be okay. That demon on your back? You can beat it. That hard road ahead? You can make it. You may have to work your ass off for it, but there is peace to be found. Robert Pollard is no hippie, but he’s all about the good vibes. Pollard didn’t climb his way up to where he is now just to tell us that we’re all fucked. Pollard, in a very natural way, nearly always offers a positive message. Even his darkest album ends with a ray of light.

And “Avalanche Aminos” is another one that can kick you out of bed and get you out the door pretty good. It’s another anthem. You still haven’t jumped around enough, Pollard says. Here’s another one to get you going. Doug Gillard gets co-writing credit for this one. The propulsive guitar riff is certainly his, while Pollard does his thing on top. “It fazes me slightly/ It dazes me nightly/ But these things won’t hurt me/ And I feel like a completely different person!” Those lines still ring through my head when I feel like life is waiting for me around the corner with an upraised axe.

It’s a killer song that can pogo you from fear to triumph. Ric Ocasek produced it, but it was somehow left off the album. I don’t understand this world that we live in.

Before we get to the headliner track, Pollard stalls just one more time with “Do the Collapse”. The title sounds important, but it’s just a rocking instrumental (Pollard had a curious habit at this time of having strange B-sides and EP tracks bear the title tracks of his albums; see the songs “Bee Thousand” and “Alien Lanes” on The Grand Hour).  Also, it’s another Tonics & Twisted Chasers throwback. It’s the instrumental backing music to the song “Girl from the Sun”, one of the bonus tracks on the CD reissue. Its history may be convoluted–this track was at least three years old, at the time–but its pleasures are simple. It’s the closest that Guided by Voices has ever gotten to AC/DC.

And now “Hold on Hope”…

Pollard was putting off this song like a tax bill and now here it is.

I don’t hate it. It’s got an undeniable hook. It comes from a skilled hand. It’s even kinda weird. What’s with that lyric about “animal mother/ she opens up for free”? How does that help me hold on hope? Also,  it oddly launches into the bridge twice, seperated only by a shy guitar solo.

“Hold on Hope” is slick to the max, but it’s a little weird. too, and I appreciate that.

My problem with it is that it’s a greeting card in song form. It’s the music equivalent to a painting in a dentist’s office. It’s shallow. It means nothing. Pollard’s written GREAT motivational songs before and after this. Songs that came straight from his heart. Songs that clearly came from a man who had lived it (“Motor Away” comes to mind right away).

By contrast, “Hold on Hope” sounds like a band who just want a hit. It’s impersonal. It’s robotic. It’s the worst possible representation of Guided by Voices.

The good news is that Pollard agrees. It came to him, he says, in a dream. He laid down the demo all by himself. Not knowing or thinking about which songs were good or bad at this early stage, he then threw it into the batch that he sent to Ric Ocasek and then Mr. Candy-O liked it. According to the Matthew Cutter biography, Pollard cringed, but went with it.

Ah, well.

It could’ve been worse, I guess. If you’re collecting everything, there’s a “Hold on Hope” promo CD out there that offers two remixes for your listening pleasure. The Ric Ocasek “radio edit” does little more than turn up the vocals and acoustic guitars extra loud (it’s the same length as the LP version). Then hitmaker Jack Joseph-Puig–his credits include work on massive songs by the likes of Tonic, Semisonic, The Goo Goo Dolls and other bands that made me change the station when they came on the radio in the 90s–gets wacky with a mix that cuts the drums and slides in a drum machine, adds brittle digital fuzz to the guitars and throws in a tambourine. As detailed in the Cutter biography, Pollard threw a fit over the Puig remix, he hated it so much. And I can’t disagree. It’s total garbage.

Meanwhile, the album version sits in the middle of these on the CD and sounds so much more smooth and easy on the ears by comparison. It’s like silk next to sandpaper. This stupid little “Hold on Hope” promo CD actually makes you like the original “Hold on Hope” more because it’s nowhere near as bad as what TVT wanted to promote.

Big record labels. They’re weirdos.

Speaking of weird, as I write this, we’re in a global pandemic. COVID-19 has fucked up my life. I seem to be of normal health, but my inner hypochondriac goes nuts everytime I cough or touch a door handle. I’m also freshly laid-off and in a financial mess. Bad news runs through my brain all day. It’s neverending. A persistent cycle. Always a new thing to deal with. Every update that I hear asks more of me. And I’m not sure how much more I have to give.

On top of that, one of my cats died last week of a long-standing respiratory condition that finally came to a head and I spent Friday night sobbing on the floor of a veterinary clinic.

When I listen to music these days, the songs are silly. Weightless. I listen to random Kiss songs. I also listen to Guided by Voices here and there. My neighbors probably think that “A Crick Uphill” is twenty minutes long, I’ve repeated it so much while I chipped away at this article. I also binged pretty hard on the song “Alex and the Omegas” the other day–simply because it showed up in my Youtube recommendations–but I’m getting fourteen years ahead of myself on that one.

But, as the walls close in and the floor quakes and the roof is aflame and snakes hiss outside the door and I could really use a little hope, do I listen to “Hold on Hope”?

Hell, no. That song sucks.

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The EP is still essential though and there are multiple ways that you can get it.

Now, Le Constant Bleeder (as the kids in France call this site) is not about collector talk. It comes up now and then, but I don’t fixate on catalog numbers and different pressings and vinyl colors. GBVDB.com is your expert there. I’m just a jerk mouthing off in the street.

But I do like to clear up confusion. I like to clarify the convoluted. Call me a sunbeam that pierces through the darkness.

The FIRST release of the Hold on Hope EP was in March of 2000. CD only. It even came in one of those cool ultra-slim cases common to CD singles at the time. If you want a hard copy of this record, that’s the easiest, cheapest way to get it, as of this writing.

Then, about a year later, in spring of 2001, just before the release of a new GBV album, Robert Pollard gave this the vinyl treatment on his independent Fading Captain Series label for a release called Daredevil Stamp Collector: Do the Collapse B-sides. It was mostly the same thing as the Hold on Hope EP, but with two differences. Pollard replaced Ocasek’s “Hold on Hope” with his own lo-fi boombox demo (the best version of the song) and added a GREAT previously unreleased song called “Perfect This Time”. It’s a teen dream overload. I’m talking prom night here. It belongs on the soundtrack of an 80s John Hughes film. I want Molly Ringwald to find true love to this song. Why it’s been banished to obscurity, I have no idea, but that’s just how this bird sings. This piece of limited 12″ blue vinyl is the rarest and most expensive variation.

 

THEN, in 2009, on Record Store Day, some zombie undead incarnation of the defunct TVT Records reissued the Hold on Hope EP on vinyl. It lacked the great “Hold on Hope” demo and the great “Perfect This Time”, but it tacked on the entire Plugs for the Program EP as a bonus, so hooray for that.

NOW, in 2020, a second Record Store Day reissue is coming out in June (Record Store Day is usually in April, but it’s been postponed for two months this year because of the whole virus thing that you might’ve heard about). I haven’t seen it, but I understand that it’s a 10″, which means it’s probably the original release from way back with none of the extra tracks. If I’m wrong, I’ll edit this entry with the correction.

In the meantime, be safe. Wash your hands every time that you’re around soap and water. Cough into your elbow. I won’t tell you to stay home because there are legions of people who can’t stay home. They have to go out to make ends meet. They have to go out to provide services and deliveries to those who can afford to keep every single person six feet away at all times.

Hold on hope. It’s the last thing that’s holding you.

The song is shitty, but the sentiment rings true.