Go Back Snowball
Calling Zero
2002, The Fading Captain Series
I was born in 1976, which puts me at the perfect age to have been an insufferable indie rock dork in the 90s.
When I wasn’t in rock clubs with my arms folded, I was getting into serious discussions about whether or not Sonic Youth still “matter” and other fascinating topics (zzzzzzzzz…) like that. I also constantly needed to flex my music “knowledge”. All that I did was spend a little too much time at the record store, but I acted like I’d walked on the goddamn moon. I was a ball of insecurities and I had no good reason to be arrogant about anything, so I filled that vacant space with my super-awesome music opinions. I thought that I had shocking and unique views. Now I’m cool and I have something to say.
Why couldn’t I just be a human being? Why did I have something to prove all of the time?
Eh, youth. The only thing that I miss about it is being able to eat a whole pizza and not feel like shit for the rest of the day.
I’m not saying that everyone who was into indie rock at the time shared my malfunctions. I’m also not putting down the music itself. 90s indie rock was a good thing that revealed possibilities and expanded horizons. People had great times with that music.
Some of it even holds up, though there’s so much that I can’t listen to anymore without recalling what a Cringe Machine I was. It was a full-time job for me back then. It kept me so occupied that I didn’t have any time to get into Superchunk.
Maybe I just haven’t heard the right songs. Maybe I haven’t given enough time to what I have heard. Maybe it’s because Superchunk never, to my battered memory, played North Texas during the peak of my live show-going (1996 to 2000), Maybe I’m a giant idiot (always and forever a possibility).
And this is how I approach this lovely record by Go Back Snowball, an album that follows Life Starts Here like spring follows winter.
What the hell is Go Back Snowball? It’s Robert Pollard and fellow rock lifer Mac McCaughan of Superchunk and Portastatic. The name comes from the pile of fake band names on Suitcase, but this album is its own thing that has nothing to do with that. Here, Go Back Snowball is a meeting of the minds for a one-off LP made in the “postal rock” method that Pollard was fond of in the new millennium. Someone creates a bunch of instrumental pieces and then hands ’em over to Uncle Bob to figure out songs to lay on top. You know the drill. It’s a perfect arrangement for an eccentric songwriter who has little patience for the fuss of studio craft.
Pollard was so efficient with it that he put out two albums in the month of February 2002. His collaboration with Tobin Sprout, Airport 5, kicked it off with Life Starts Here, a loose and spacey affair, something for the cold nights. Then, mere weeks later, we got Go Back Snowball. It’s a lot brighter. It lets in the sun. It has its moody moments, but there’s always a sweet melody around the corner.
So, I’m not an expert in McCaughan’s body of work, but I do know that his music here is all pretty colors. It goes for a kaleidoscope of moods, from the serene to the noisy. Sometimes it’s acoustic, sometimes it’s electric, all of it is melodic. McCaughan also lays on more pianos, keyboards and horns than we’re used to hearing with Pollard. He’s a one-man-band who reaches for a lush sound that he’ll never quite achieve within these modest means, but his music yearns for it beautifully. It’s also lively and playful, invitations for great songs.
The opening track feels good right away. Pollard often reaches back to 1960s psych inspirations, but there was nothing yet in his catalog that boasted a big, stinging Farfisa until McCaughan brought one. On top, Pollard lusts for a “Radical Girl” because that’s what you do over a sound like that. She sounds like someone worth crying 96 tears over, even if I’m not sure if our Radical Girl is actually a girl by the end of the song. “She’s so uniquely human/ Look at her spotlights beeping”, Pollard tells us.
From there, Pollard digs into his notebooks and bounces between many of his usual subjects. “Never Forget Where You Get Them” is, I think, about the artist’s soul and not losing it no matter how hard the world tries to kick it out of you. It could also be about religious conviction or whatever energy from within keeps you alive and is always under attack.
In “Red Hot Halos” and over one of McCaughn’s screwier soundscapes, Pollard sings about demons who come to us looking like angels. Sounds like a music business story to me.
“Again the Waterloo” conjures up images of tape machines, mountains, cities and “the small minds of fish who demand their own kingdoms”. My theory is that it’s a bit of Guided by Voices self-reference. The next GBV album, Universal Truths and Cycles, went through two recording stages. At first the band went to Pollard’s usual haunt, Cro-Magnon, to lay down some beefy “prog’ songs. Later, Pollard had a brain storm of short song ideas that he wanted Guided by Voices to handle, so he got ’em back together at Todd Tobias’s home studio, Waterloo Sound, to bang ’em out quickly in order to round out the album. Again the Waterloo. It’s a place where we “put our magnetic heads together”.
Over a lusciously electric raw guitar, a simple beat and some melodic keyboard tinkling, Pollard conjures up “Climb”. It’s a song about aging and throwing off old identities. I know something about that. Get a few wrinkles on you and some gray hair and you’re not the same person today that you were when you were young and foolish. Along the way, you lose track of people, but you wish the best for them as you close out side 1 of an album, of a day, of your life. There’s more to come.
Side 2 keeps walking the walk. There’s always a breeze or a mood in the air. “Go Gold” is one Pollard’s many songs of encouragement. “Lifetime for the Mavericks” is a quick one about the artist’s life and its trials. I hear a whisper of his marital troubles in this one (“I am a dreamer/ I’m this far away/ You are a screamer/ I hear you”), but he’s no longer writing divorce albums. Now it’s just a story and this one has a happy ending as our narrator decides that the bohemian’s path is the way to go, despite everything.
“Throat of Throats” is a personal favorite. Pollard surfs on bold synthetic waves from McCaughn’s keyboards. We’ve never heard Pollard work with music like this, but he’s comfortable. It’s just another place to drop a honeyed melody and lines such as “Vultures looping through fiery hoops/ In third dimension jumping suits”.
“Ironrose Worm” is the cool-down before “It is Divine” comes in to blast us with summery nostalgia and this LP’s most perfect track. Pollard and McCaughan are as in sync on “It is Divine” as the bees and the honeysuckle. Even the modest guitar solo hits the spot. “It is divine, my child/ And it only lasts a second”, goes the chorus. Fill it up with your own memories of things long gone. The song also comes in at the perfect time, just before the end of the album. It’s the sunset. The golden hour.
The closing credits of this movie roll to “Dumbluck Systems Stormfront”. Its slow, stumbling gait makes me feel old again, but that’s okay. Middle age is a weird place, too. That’s where I am now and it’s as strange as anywhere else I’ve ever been. I think that I know what “The good earth rules/ Like a Utopian spoof/ Zip code hallelujah” means even if I can’t literally explain it.
The best I can do is that when you’re young, you relate to the sun. The sun is a jillion years old, but every sunbeam is young. It hits you mercilessly. It wants your attention. It always wants to say hello.
When you get older though, you relate more to the earth. This cracked, imperfect, dirty thing that you walk on everyday. This thing that’s always there no matter what and no one is ever excited about it.
And that’s okay. I’m grateful for the earth. I’m glad that it’s there.
That’s what I think about, at least, after I’ve called zero and gone back with the snowball.
Fun Fact: The sleeve art is one of the very few that you’ll see here not personally designed by Robert Pollard. Mac McCaughan took over for this one–he’s even co-credited with the layout–and his simple photograph of a pair of twin beds in an unadorned room is a perfect summary of the “postal rock” records. There’s nothing fancy going on here. It’s just two guys going to work on the same ground that we all step on every single day.
Just wanted to say thanks for this series. You are a great writer.