Robert Pollard-Mania! #68: LIFE STARTS HERE

Airport 5
Life Starts Here
2002, The Fading Captain Series

My guess is that many deep-digging fans of Robert Pollard are White Album people.

It’s the old, dead-horse debate. Did The Beatles’ White Album need to be a 30-track double-LP? Do its detours and excesses hold up? Was it really necessary that we hear “Revolution 9” and “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and “Wild Honey Pie”?

My answer to those questions is YES, YES, and YES. That’s my favorite Beatles album. It’s crazy and lively and packed with ideas and I would sooner chop off one of my fingers than lose any of it. The frosty clip collage “Revolution 9” is cool as shit. It makes the closing lullaby “Good Night” creepy.  On The White Album, the most famous rock band in the world deconstruct their sound in a fast-paced flurry of genres and the only way to end it is on an apocalyptic note. It’s as good as it gets.

Some disagree. Some would prefer a smoother, more conventional ride. They’ve got a whole list of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison songs that they wish they’d never heard. I think that these people are goofy, but, hey, it’s a big world. There’s room for all kinds.

What I’m trying to say is that Robert Pollard’s music has some of the same appeal and leads to similar division.

He was putting out five albums a year at this point and he’s always gotten criticism for being excessive. For those of us who continue to follow and enjoy these records though, we like the different moods. We like the different angles from which these records approach Pollard’s “four P’s” (that would be pop, prog, psych and punk). We like taking these back roads and spontaneous exits off the highway. We like hearing more of Pollard’s colorful lyrics and natural way with a melody, even when they don’t always lead to “pop songs” exactly.

The main thing that interests me about Life Starts Here is its crazy mood. It’s playful, but wasted. It feels like a walk through a closed amusement park late at night. The merry-go-round is motionless and there’s rust on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

This isn’t another Tonics & Twisted Chasers–it’s not as manic and impatient–but Tobin Sprout’s music seems to come from a similar place of spitballing weird ideas, with an imperative to keep things simple and get plenty of use out of his trusty ol’ drum machine.

Some of his work here comes from the same post-punk/jangle neighborhood as Tower in the Fountain of Sparks, the first Airport 5 album, released a mere six months earlier. In other parts, Sprout gets kooky with ambient sound breaks and cartoonish piano and keyboards.

Meanwhile, Pollard’s performances on top are weary. Not lazy, mind you, but weathered. Going back to The White Album, much of Life Starts Here has a little sprinkle of the feeling of Lennon’s “I’m So Tired” in it.

The whole last year was crazy. In 2001, Robert Pollard was 43 and on the road, traveling this way and that, pushing a new album on another long tour, talking to writers from every magazine and local rag out there about his divorce, then going up at night in rock clubs where Guided by Voices played 50-song, two-hour, “give ’em their money’s worth” shows. In between all of that, he put out four new albums.

Other musicians might take some serious time off after that, but Pollard kept making records, more and more, filing fresh reports on the state of the soul. Go to sleep, wake up, make art. Life starts here.

This album is nutty from the start. Sprout’s mock-music hall piano and “record scratch” effects on “Intro” knock us off balance right away. It could be leading us anywhere. Pollard sings “Making a wish/ And your wishes are heard/ And your words are herded/ Into proper grids”. I hear it as being about the recording process, or maybe any kind of editing process. Moving things around in your work, getting it right.

The synthetic beat and gentle breeze of “We’re in the Business” is pure Tobin Sprout. I’d know this sound anywhere. On top, Pollard writes a smirking ode to undertakers and all of the people who professionally put us in the ground after we set sail to Valhalla (“The sweet trip/ That no one’s taking”). I don’t know if he’s read Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Loved One, but this could be its theme song,

In his work, Pollard was moving past his divorce, but “Yellow Wife No. 5” might be one last gasp of newly single man’s angst. The title is a play on Yellow #5, the food coloring dye. Sprout’s lead guitar takes you back to college radio 1985 and Pollard’s chorus is gets your head bobbing. No singles were released for this LP, but this would be my pick if Bob called me up and asked.

You know what WOULDN’T make a good single, though? (And that’s not a putdown, by the way.) The seven-minute “Wrong Drama Addiction”. This is the track in which Tobin Sprout infamously interrupts his placid piece of music so that his dishwasher (or some other similar appliance) can take over the song for two-and-a-half minutes of unaccompanied ambient rinse cycle fun. I don’t mind that. It’s late at night. Let’s get weird. Pollard could have cut that out, but he didn’t. You’re supposed to lay back and zone out to this record’s oddball pace.

If you make it through that, the folky goodness of “However Young They Are” waits for you, but don’t get too comfortable because the aliens soon land in “The Dawntrust Guarantee”. Sprout’s drum-less piece sounds straight out of a low-budget sci-fi movie while Pollard speak-sings a stark, cynical poem about an image on a wall. Could be pornography, could be an advertisement (“Her growing religion/ Gains gusto/ Her growing hair/ Is attractive/In the joint/ On the wall”). All that I know for sure is that it’s the end of side 1.

The flipside settles into a groove of poppy, pretty songs. “Forever Since” may bring the most fetching melody, even if Pollard stops singing in the middle of a verse as if he made a mistake. “Impressions of a Leg” has the most energy of anything here. It picks up a little speed as Pollard writes about some curious combination of aging, hard work and art.

On some days, “How Brown?” is my favorite. It’s an anthem about brotherhood that takes a pessimistic turn at the end (“It’s making sense/ And it drives the crucial moment/ Into a fat body of work/ But, oh, how worthless”). Pollard sings it like he just climbed a mountain.

I get fantasy story vibes off the next two. The very title “Natives Approach Our Plane” makes me think of Edgar Rice Burroughs and his outsiders in hostile, exotic worlds, Pollard also makes damn sure that we don’t forget that title as he loops his repetition of it through the entire song, perhaps to assist the uneventful backing music with some urgency.

My head is still in worlds of fiction for “I Can’t Freeze Anymore”. “Lost in the world/ Far from the colony”, Pollard sings. Also, “The price of ice has sky-rocketed”. It could be a space traveler used to the cold who lands on a hot planet. Or maybe it’s a piece of climate change future speculation. Or, hey, maybe it’s simply an ode to a kitchen freezer on the fritz. More appliances!

Lastly, over Sprout’s goofiest keyboard sounds on the record, Pollard closes the show with what I think is another song about the creative process, maybe even an intentional bookend to the intro. “Out in the World” is about finishing up and letting go. The lyrics tease the creator who uses the pursuit of unattainable perfection as an excuse to never complete his work (“Find them very good/ And that would be absurd/ Find them somewhat bad/ And that would be much better”), but Pollard cuts that off with advice that he repeats with insistence. “Move on it! Unshakeable! It’s a cinch!”

Just get it done. Get it out in the world. You need to move on. If the work fails or nobody cares, just keep going. It’s how Pollard does it, at least.

Hey, if even The Beatles can’t please everybody, why should any artist worry about that?

Life starts here. So, put a period on the end of the sentence already and get the hell out of there.

I’m going to do that right now.