Airport 5
Tower in the Fountain of Sparks
2001, The Fading Captain Series
Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout made three albums together as a duo and each one is its own odd creature that just barely gets along with the others.
Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the first one. Sprout created the instrumental tracks and then Pollard came up with songs to go on top and they called it Guided by Voices because why not? It was 1996 and Tonics sounded like the mutant brother of Alien Lanes. Lo-fi. Fucked up. Weird all over, but in a familiar way. Pollard’s voice and Sprout’s guitar were sounds we’d heard work together many times before.
Five years later, after Sprout had long left the band to raise his new baby and make beautiful solo records that expanded his range into perfect piano pop and organ-heavy psychedelic bubblegum (I’ve raved here about his first one, Carnival Boy, and it’s not even the best one) he and Pollard got together again for another album, made the same way as before.
Sprout’s music, Pollard’s songs and words. That’s it, except this time they called it Airport 5.
Also, they didn’t sound much like Guided by Voices anymore–at least not in the way that many expected.
If the soul of Guided by Voices was born in mid-1960s freakbeat, raised by 70s stadium rock, blew its mind on 70s art-rock, got damaged by punk and was ultimately refined in 80s underground sounds, it’s in that last era that Airport 5 spends its time.
Tower in the Fountain of Sparks is mid-tempo and nocturnal and it sounds to me like an artifact from about 1983. There’s no single band from back then that Airport 5 take after. Rather, the project hits on something in these ringing guitar moments, in these gentle moments, in these abrasive moments, in these expert melodies–and in the way that they all hang together–that captures the light of a time long gone. It’s an album that could’ve mingled just fine in the time of new wave, post-punk and jangle.
When I listen to it, I see a college radio station. A white label promo of Tower in the Fountain of Sparks sits in the studio among records by The Comsat Angels and Translator and The Cure. The DJ kid with large-framed dorky glasses will cue up Airport 5 soon, sometime after he fulfills that night’s requests for “Talk About the Passion” and plays the debut 45 from that local band with the girl singer who twitches a lot onstage.
I also see a record store. You breeze past a flyer for the Husker Du show happening next Tuesday and browse the racks. The new Police album plays in the store’s tape deck. The clerk who dresses like Elvis Costello on a budget works the counter. Somewhere in there, Airport 5 sits waiting for you to take a chance.
That’s how I’ve always heard this, at least. In 2001, I was all about that sound. Early-to-mid 1980s independent and underground rock. The Days of Wine and Roses by The Dream Syndicate was my favorite album. Either that or The Edge of the World by The Mekons. The dark and beautiful wee hours mood of Straight Ahead, a solo record by Greg Sage from The Wipers, was another memorable 80s discovery during a time when I treated my turntable like it was a time machine.
Back then, you could luck into albums like the above for $10 or less. Used vinyl was still the broke music fan’s choice and I dug through those smelly stacks every week. I was in the first stages of losing interest in most new music in favor of following these old trails–and Tower in the Fountain of Sparks fit right in. It came off like a lost gem from the bins.
Still, it was controversial when it came out. Expectations ran high for it. Not everyone was into GBV’s stab at the big time on TVT Records. Others were confused by Pollard’s sprawling output on his own Fading Captain Series label, which was up to over a dozen releases already at this point, after a mere two-and-a-half years.
For those people, a Pollard and Sprout reunion was an easy thing to grab onto. That Pollard needed Sprout as a foil to offset his indulgences was a common view among the detractors. They wanted something like that old sound back. Hey, it was the summer of 2001 and the 90s ain’t dead yet, right?
On this album, Pollard and Sprout say “No comment”. They’re too busy following their own weird trails and it wasn’t what some listeners wanted from them.
There’s gold here though, if you’re willing to take it on its own terms.
Pollard would go on to make a lot of records in this same format with other collaborators and I tend to credit the guy who makes the music as the one who sets the tone and this album finds Tobin Sprout past the lo-fi basement sound of mid-90s GBV. He’s smart enough to not try to recreate 1996, but also smart enough to remember that his past work with Pollard kept things simple.
The drums–when there are any–are a drum machine. There’s a dib-dab of organ here and there. Some tracks are just a guitar or two and nothing else except for Sprout’s ear for a melody.
The 4-track fuzz may be gone, but the small town vibes remain. Sprout’s music is the score of a late night drive in a place where everything is closed.
As for Pollard’s songs, he’s still meditating on the post-divorce life, still “sweeping away the broken pieces”. It’s not all that he talks about, but he keeps going back to it.
In one of the most beautiful songs here, “War & Wedding”, Pollard answers Sprout’s new wave take on gospel with a cynical look at marriage. Maybe we’re all smiling now in our formal wear near a big stupid wedding cake, but this union that we’re all celebrating will be tested. And not every marriage survives. Sometimes it’s a war. You don’t have to trust Pollard. Check out the divorce statistics.
Then there’s “Circle of Trim”, which is about the struggle to find love. Or at least to find something–anything–that satisfies. It hasn’t been used much in recent decades, but trim is old man slang for pussy, just so you know. “Find a fine citizen in the circle of trim.” Formal language meets the profane. It’s funny.
“Stifled Man Casino” we already talked about. It’s the divorced man sitting in his new apartment after he gave up the house.
Meanwhile, in opening track “Burns Carpenter, Man of Science” our hero in the title figures out how to bottle up and sell happiness only to see it fail because it’s too dangerous (“this kind of love/ will destroy the ozone”).
Then there’s the back-to-back pessimism of “Subatomic Rain”, which brings apocalypse and heavy Bowie vibes, and “One More”, which is about futility (“have you discovered another cold planet?”).
I would call this Pollard’s darkest album of 2001. Isolation Drills exorcised at least some of its pain in blazing anthems. Choreographed Man of War found something that resembled a good time in ragged rock ‘n’ roll banged out with a few friends. Here, this is just Pollard and tapes from Tobin Sprout and there’s a loneliness to it. It’s a solo night walk. It’s the end of the party after everyone’s gone.
(Let’s also mention that this was Pollard’s most recent album when September 11 happened. I had quit a shitty job a mere week before and so I had all day to watch the news and obsess and scroll through sad stories and conspiracy theories in internet newsgroups at 4 AM. I didn’t eat for a few days, I remember, let alone listen to music. Just couldn’t.
When I finally needed to turn away, this album was one of my places to escape. It had only been out a month and I was still getting to know it. It was still growing on me.
I was young and scared and even if Pollard’s divorce paled in comparison to your country being attacked and thousands of people dead, this album’s darkness still resonated. Its sour mood still meant something.
To this day, this music takes me back to the fear. I remember the apartment that I lived in and how the whole building smelled like stale cigarettes and dead cockroaches. I remember my bulky old computer that accessed the internet via dial-up. I remember my cheap desk chair that made my back hurt and I remember living off of ramen and beer.)
If there’s a ray of light here, it’s in its raw loveliness. There are real jewels among these fifteen songs.
My sleeper favorite is “Mansfield on the Sky”. What is it about? I have no idea, but it recalls an old cowboy ballad. The great Bob Nolan could have written it for The Sons of the Pioneers a few decades before Bob Pollard was even born. Sprout’s music spreads out the sky and Pollard’s song paints in the stars.
Maybe life on Earth is sad and brutal, but if you can think bigger–if you can really get into pondering that sky above and get into feeling real, real small, so small that you don’t even matter anymore–maybe everything ends up looking beautiful.
Maybe.