As of this writing, Robert Pollard has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 albums out, plus another tall stack of EPs, singles, and box sets. The first Guided by Voices record came out in 1986 and he’s refused to shut up ever since. This scares off some people while others have the time of their lives geeking out over it all.
I’m one of the geeks. I love it. I mean, aren’t most great rock icons crazy? Or at least appear to be? Little Richard was crazy. David Bowie was crazy. Glitter and punk and rockabilly were whole genres of bands aggressively looking crazy. Looking crazy, like you don’t follow the normal rules, is what makes a band cool. Looking crazy is a test for the listener. Not everyone gets it, but those who do will cling to it.
Ex-college jock, ex-schoolteacher, current rock ‘n’ roll cult hero Robert Pollard (born on October 31, 1957) doesn’t seem too crazy if you look at him, but take the long, strange journey into his records and that’s when you see it.
Yeah, he’s crazy. He’s as crazy as any of ’em.
The sensible way to make a list of 100 songs from this Sargasso Sea of music would be to apply a filter to it. Stick to his flagship project Guided by Voices maybe. That would be smart. Or make separate lists for different eras of Pollard’s work. That would be smart, too.
I’m not smart, though. I had to do things the hard way.
I had to be the guy who tries to jump his Kawasaki motorcycle over a few too many cars and then needs to be rushed to the hospital.
This list has one rule: Robert Pollard must have a songwriting credit. That’s it. Songs from Guided by Voices, his solo albums, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and assorted other projects are all welcome. There’s even one song here that Pollard wrote yet doesn’t sing or perform on the record.
This also means that the work of other songwriters aren’t here. If I made a dedicated Guided by Voices list, some choice Tobin Sprout moments would sit in the ranks for sure (“Dodging Invisible Rays”, “To Remake the Young Flyer”, “Waves”), as would Doug Gillard’s “I Am a Tree”.
I made this decision because the Guided by Voices of 1986 and of 2023 have only one thing in common: Robert Pollard. The story of Guided by Voices is fractured because there is no definitive lineup. Pollard’s songs are the one thing that connect the various eras, so that’s where I direct my surgical focus and his songs are found in many different places.
The BIG problem with a list like this though is that there are many more than 100 great Pollard songs. In ten minutes I will change my mind about nearly everything here.
In the spirit of Pollard’s music though, there are times when it’s best to blurt out whatever you’ve got and then move on. Sometimes good things are about the moment and perfection isn’t so important. Moments can mean a lot and lists are one of those things that will never be perfect.
So, this is my list, as of this moment at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2023.
100. “A Salty Salute” (Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes, 1995)
He wouldn’t do this, but if Pollard decided to start every Guided by Voices live show with “A Salty Salute”, some fans wouldn’t mind. If it’s not the most sophisticated composition in the world, “A Salty Salute” is something that might be better. It’s a simple thing with a strange power. It walks up to a crowd with authority (that classic bass line) and when Pollard sings, he sounds like he’s delivering a sermon or making an argument. It seems like important stuff. Grand. Mythic. By the end of its ninety seconds, you understand that he’s really inviting us to a party. And I want to go. When Pollard needs a poignant opening song, he often reaches for this one. It opened Alien Lanes. It opened the 2003 Guided by Voices Best of compilation. It opened the GBV reunion tour in 2010. It opened the first GBV live show that I saw (November 1999). I think it should open this list.
99. “Glad Girls” (Guided by Voices, Isolation Drills, 2001)
“Don’t bore us, get to the chorus!” goes an old expression about pop music craft and “Glad Girls” takes that to heart with a giant sound made for heavy rotation. This artifact of the band’s two-year flirtation with the mainstream on TVT Records is an anthem scientifically cantilevered to not be ignored by even the dumbest listener. The bad news is that rock radio in 2001 was a sewer of mall punk and nu-metal and this power pop hook lost its uphill battle to take over. The good news is that the 43-year-old Pollard was seasoned enough to shrug it off. His shot at the big time didn’t work out, but his vision was always larger than that and he and the band moved on unscathed. Today, “Glad Girls” is ancient history (though it remains a live setlist staple) that holds up as an eccentric songwriting genius’s last-ditch, pull-out-all-the-stops–and best–effort to wow the mainstream.
What I like most about “Glad Girls” though is that it’s deeper than it sounds. As a single, it comes off as maximum frivolity. The fist-pumper chorus (“Glad girls/ Only want to get you high” repeated about a billion times) comes at you with such a sledgehammer that it overshadows everything else in the song.
Heard on the album though, a dark side emerges. Isolation Drills is a divorce record. Pollard’s first marriage did not survive his late-bloomer music career and many of his songs at the time deal with frustration, bitterness, and regret. Sequenced in the middle of that (side 2, track 1), the party-hearty drive of “Glad Girls” hits differently. You can better hear the sadness in the verses (“There will be no coronation/ There will be no flowers flowing”).
I think that “Glad Girls” is about the temptations in life that ruin a person. The “glad girls” might be girls, but they could also be drugs or even selling out as an artist. The “glad girls” can be any mistake that derails your life for the worst.
Maybe “Glad Girls” is Pollard’s warning to himself. As a man with a family who left his teaching job for music at the tender age of 36, he was uniquely appreciative of his new career. Rock musicians fade away and self-destruct all of the time. Pollard was determined to not let that happen to him. Under the roar of “Glad Girls”, he seems to be saying Okay, asshole, you just lost your marriage.; now don’t lose anything else.
98. “Electronic Windows to Nowhere” (Guided by Voices, Styles We Paid For, 2020)
Flash forward twenty years and Pollard is living well. Everything worked out. He survived. I love that we have a Pollard in his 60s today who still puts out several albums a year and sometimes comments on our stupid modern world. “Electronic Windows to Nowhere” is about something that everyone knows deep down, which is that the internet is bad for us. In exchange for convenience and interactivity and the magic of being plugged into the entire globe, we’ve traded our attention span and our sanity and our record stores. There’s nothing new about that observation. There’s definitely nothing new about a 62-year-old man saying it, but this song is special for the band’s fetching new wave (guitar division) snap and its words that describe a world that’s both seductive and empty. This song is not a rant from an old fart. It’s a lovely piece of poetry. You ever waste hours of your day on social media drama? If so, Pollard’s song is a friendly voice here to tell you how crazy that is.
97. “Atlantic Cod” (Teenage Guitar, Force Fields at Home. 2013)
I’ve counted them. Outside of Guided by Voices and his solo albums, Robert Pollard, as of 2023, has put out records under twenty-five other guises and collaborations (source: my own list on Rate Your Music). One of those is called Teenage Guitar and it’s his stab at one-man-band rock over a few LPs (and eventually a Guided by Voices album that we’ll talk about soon). They’re some of the rawest expressions of his personality out there. Impatient. Ramshackle. Into noise and weirdness and the occasional drone, but never aimless. Pollard’s natural way with melody is always there. Teenage Guitar albums are not for everyone, but are deeply satisfying for some of us. “Atlantic Cod” is the most undeniable song from the first LP. It’s one of Pollard’s “pocket anthems”. It’s one verse and one chorus and that’s it, but it can reverberate through the rest of your life if you let it.
96. “Dragons Awake!” (Guided by Voices, Do the Collapse, 1999)
Get a group of five Pollard freaks together and there will always be one who can’t stand the TVT era (1999-2001). Me, I have a soft spot for it. It was a fun time to be a fan and I appreciate it as something that Pollard needed to get out of his system (and by “it”, I mean trying to score a radio hit while he had the fire in him to play that game). Still, my favorite songs from this period are the sleepers. Album cuts and B-sides. What’s interesting about them is that while some of the singles were iffy, Guided by Voices were still very much on Pollard’s psych-prog-Who-Beatles-Genesis trip. See “Dragons Awake!” which sounds like a pastoral section in an old rock opera. It’s a gentle acoustic moment that features lyrics such as “Softer tits will greet you/ They have been tapped/ By suckers of the sap”.
While I’m here, I want to say that an expanded deluxe edition of Do the Collapse would be an essential release if it ever happens and if it’s done right. Collect every B-side and BBC recording. Gather up the demos, including the ones for songs that didn’t make the record. Don’t forget “Perfect This Time” (a pop wonder that nearly made this list). Class it up with some great liner notes. Get deep under the skin of this album and watch it be reassessed as a gem.
95. “Time Machines” (Lexo and the Leapers, Ask Them, 1999)
In retrospect though, the most important thing about the TVT era is that Pollard’s deal with them gave him total freedom on his own label, The Fading Captain Series. He could put out as many records as he wanted on the side and nobody in some office in New York City could argue with it. When the band went back to Matador Records for a few years afterward, he secured the same arrangement. The result is that from 1999 on, Pollard’s body of work went from already voluminous to completely nuts. 4-5 new albums a year from him became normal. While the music industry was confused and fumbling as it adjusted to the internet, Pollard carved out his own industry that played to his cult with an annual slate of solo albums, unpredictable side projects, vinyl-only curiosities, and even magazines of his collage art. Fans like me bought everything and kept this rogue operation going. It’s still going today. Pollard made the list of 90s indie rock survivors by being smart, bold, and weird.
The Lexo and the Leapers EP is a KILLER record that’s wired on that 1999 energy. Pollard got the Dayton band The Tasties to back him up and they banged out the whole thing (six songs) in one day. Pollard’s favorite from it is surely “Alone, Stinking, and Unafraid”, which was a fixture of GBV’s live set for five years. Then there’s “Fair Touching”, which Guided by Voices re-recorded two years later. Me, I have to give it up for the Cheap Trick-style opening thunderbolt “Time Machines”, which I think is an anthem for nostalgia, a major Pollard theme.
94. “Dolphins of Color” (Circus Devils, Five, 2005)
I love Circus Devils. When they were around (2001-2017), they were my favorite of Pollard’s side trips. Noise and weirdness are vital to his music. A band doesn’t arrive at GBV’s damaged sound in their lo-fi period without an appreciation for the far-out. For those of us who are into that (and if you are, you’ll have the most fun with Pollard’s records), Circus Devils are great. They’re devoted to left turns, exotic sounds, and oddball songs.
There’s a big difference between GBV noise and Circus Devils noise though, and that is Todd and Tim Tobias. They make the music for Circus Devils and, in contrast to old GBV’s drunken spontaneity, the Tobiases are stone sober mad scientists. They keep their surgical tools clean and organized and they know exactly what they’re doing when they start severing nerves. As fans of Devo and Black Sabbath, the Tobiases sound is grounded in rock, even when some of their music sounds more like it’s made with kitchen appliances than guitars. Part of the fun is hearing where Pollard goes with this stuff when he adds his song on top. It often leads to concept albums and some of his strangest prog turns.
Circus Devils records contain some of the most abrasive moments AND some of the quietest moments in the Pollard catalog. No one song sums up their many moods, but “Dolphins of Color” comes close. Todd Tobias’s music is an eerie wind and Pollard’s song is a mystical incantation that I won’t even start trying to interpret. The whole thing is cool as hell.
For more coolness, seek out live versions. “Dolphins of Color” was a constant on Robert Pollard’s 2006 solo-billed tour. On stage, it gained a spacey synthesizer (played by Tommy Keene) that took it to the next level. There are two official recordings out there. One is on the B-side of “Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft” (Pollard solo single) and the other is on a promo CD called Moon.
93. “Royal Cyclopean” (ESP Ohio, Starting Point of the Royal Cyclopean, 2016)
A French reader of my Pollard stuff once told me that the first album that clicked with him was the ESP Ohio LP of all things and I love that. Pollard’s work is so vast that there are an endless number of trails that a new listener can take into it.
Starting Point of the Royal Cyclopean is a bright, fun, toy store of a record. Doug Gillard is a big part of it, which got fans excited. Mark Shue and Travis Harrison make up the rest of the group. What’s the best song? I may as well throw a dart at a board to figure that out, but my heart tells me that this is the pick. It’s a glorious pop production in every way. This is Beatles 1967 stuff. Everything about it is clever. I love when Gillard’s guitar starts to “sing along” with the main synth hook. This team shortly evolved to form the next phase of Guided by Voices.
92. “The Right Thing” (Robert Pollard, From a Compound Eye, 2006)
Back in 2006, when I was still feeling my way through From a Compound Eye, Pollard’s solo double album and first major release after the ’04 break-up of Guided by Voices, I didn’t know what to make of the strange decision to open one of its most appealing pop-rockers with over a full minute of the mumbled, murky boombox demo. I didn’t mind it, but I couldn’t explain it.
Then out in public somewhere, I happened to hear The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”, with the choir intro, and that’s when it clicked. Pollard’s demo and The London Bach Choir on the Stones record are the same thing. Presentation. A prelude. An unpretentious way to elevate an already-great song into something even grander. You hear the whole melody one way and then you hear it again in another way, but fleshed out (by Pollard and Todd Tobias) and more powerful. The effect of this contrast can be dazzling, as it is here. That Pollard would do something like that in such a simple, lo-tech way is very him.
91. “Pantherz” (Guided by Voices, Jellyfish Reflector, 1996)
This is a kick-ass anthem. Pollard has a lot of kick-ass anthems. What makes this one so special? Well, in 1997, I went to a record store (the now-gone Bill’s Records & Tapes in the Dallas, Texas area) and found a strange Guided by Voices double LP called Jellyfish Reflector. It had no tracklist printed on it. I knew it was a live album, but I still appreciated the mystery of the presentation. I bought it. I played it. It ruled. It was the first time I heard what GBV sounded like on stage. They rocked a lot more than I expected and I bounced around for weeks.
What made it even better was that it had three then-exclusive studio tracks hiding at the end of side 4. I had no idea that they were there. I touched a piano key and a secret passage hissed open. Sometimes I miss how surprises like that could happen before we all got so plugged into the internet, where everything gets spoiled within a day.
All three songs knocked me out (their titles are etched into the vinyl dead wax), but “Pantherz” was the hook-monster that leaped off the turntable so fiercely that I wondered why Pollard decided to release it THIS way. Also, I loved it for that. Great stuff hides in odd places so always dig deep. That was the lesson that I took from “Pantherz” and I’ve never forgotten it.
It’s an essential song. A man and a woman hook up, He takes off when she gets pregnant. Both were young and immature (“We’re just babies when we meet”) and have nothing in common anymore, but the kid keeps them in each other’s lives. Us children of divorce might feel this one a little more intensely than others. Pollard sketches out the story with inspired economy. “Strong words and big black birds on a telephone wire” is a brilliant summary of strained and dreaded communication.
There’s a solo guitar version on the first Suitcase box set and it’s good, but the full-band take is the one with the powerful right uppercut.
90. “Captain’s Dead” (Guided by Voices, Devil Between My Toes, 1987)
When the early, subterranean Guided by Voices albums were reissued as a box set in 1995, it was too much for most critics of the time. The consensus was that the box was a junk heap with a decent moment here and there. Today though, GBV’s old DIY releases age beautifully. Those albums are something that we rarely hear, which is a band who are working in true obscurity and are obsessed enough to not give up. They made six records, pressed onto vinyl and everything, for pretty much no audience (they weren’t playing live and weren’t on a label). Each one is a fresh start. They don’t repeat themselves. Each release takes a different angle on what Guided by Voices are and could be.
Devil Between My Toes is my favorite of the early batch because it’s the strangest. What other LP by anybody has silly bubblegum pop sitting next to dark, dingy instrumentals? That album is so all-over-the-place that no one track can represent it.
“Captain’s Dead” certainly doesn’t represent it, but it rocks hard and its Byrds-gone-punk energy is an oddly perfect closer to thirteen previous pieces of basement madness.
89. “Lonely Town” (Guided by Voices, Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow, 2005 ; recorded in 1987)
Speaking of box sets, the 100-song Suitcase outtakes collections tend to get the same reaction that the 1995 box got. “A few gems surrounded by junk”. I can understand how the casual passerby may think that, but us freaks know that the appeal of each Suitcase is that they are collages. The tracks on them aren’t a row of corpses with tags on the toe. They are living parts of a freeform epic of noise. Songs from decades apart talk to each other. Different recording methods collide. A unique portrait of Pollard’s history and vision emerges.
How do you get to be as brilliant as Robert Pollard? One thing you’ve got to do is get good enough to record a song as great as “Lonely Town” and then reject it. Put it out eighteen years later as track 20 on the third CD of volume 2 of a series of 4-CD sets. That’s what Pollard does with one of his loveliest pieces of small town blues, at least.
The song itself is straightforward. I love Pollard’s crazy poetry, but it’s always interesting when he pops out with something that Hank Williams might have written. He’s got a few of those. Most of them are old and this is one of them. It’s a heartbreak song. Love has gone sour and, man, this town is a sad place without her. Only a gorgeous melody and a lovely little earworm guitar part keeps our narrator company.
I want to hear someone cover “Lonely Town” in an ambitious way. I can imagine a jazz arrangement and a country version. The sound of Guided by Voices in 1987 is small town rock, but this song is universal. London and Tokyo and New York City are lonely towns to somebody.
88. “Sheetkickers” (Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
Another break-up song, but this one is different. This one rocks your face off. Now, my personal favorite break-up song by anybody is Elvis Costello’s “Hand in Hand”. If I made a mix on the theme, that would be the first track, but I might slot “Sheetkickers” right after it. Wallow in your bitterness with Costello and then let Guided by Voices kick you in the ass and show you how to get over it. What helps a lot is the sheer confidence of the band. BIG Steve Albini-recorded drums here. Every sound is in 3-D. Pollard almost let it sit unreleased while he changed his mind fifty times about what Under the Bushes Under the Stars needed to be, but Matador Records talked him into making it a bonus track. Thank you, Matador. I needed this song back in ’96.
Trivia: The title is a reference to a classic Queen live bootleg LP called Sheetkeeckers.
87. “A Real Stab” (Ricked Wicky, I Sell the Circus, 2015)
Ricked Wicky is the best Pollard project that most people forget about. They fall between the cracks of two different phases of Guided by Voices. The lineup were all familiar names (Nick “no relation to Mitch” Mitchell, Todd Tobias, Kevin March) and they flourished for one year. I believe that the first Ricked Wicky LP was recorded before the reunion lineup of GBV dissolved and it’s so powerful that it all but announces that Pollard was itching to move on. Ricked Wicky were getting his killers in 2015. If you had any doubt about the new project’s legitimacy, this anthem comes in at the end to bring the roof down. This is one of those songs that reminds you that Pollard really, really, REALLY loves The Who.
86. “Planet Score” (Guided by Voices, Motivational Jumpsuit, 2014)
“Yeah, it’s a record store!”
Robert Pollard also loves record stores. When he travels, he drops in at favorite ones around the country and always buys a stack, including records that he already owns. He’s glad to scoop up his umpteenth copy of Sgt. Pepper. That’s eccentric, but I think I get it. It’s about the connection. Pollard is a devoted record collector and if you browsed his shelves, I bet he could tell you where he bought everything. The place where you bought a record is a part of the music in a strange way.
Record stores are how rock lives and gets passed down. They’re the “planet’s core”. A good one is a place to get absorbed by not only music, but also by the energy around it. The posters on the wall, the flyers for upcoming shows in the window. It’s where you take chances on music only because you like the cover art and it’s where you have cordial chit-chat with some dude who’s into neo-fuckwave scumcore. A short time in one of these places can show you that there’s more to the world than what you see everyday. If you can’t afford everything you want, your imagination can make up for it.
Digital streaming service recommendation algorithms will NEVER be the same or even close. They can be helpful, but they don’t send you into left field.
Record stores used to be everywhere. I remember that and so does Robert Pollard. It’s a different world now, but there are hold-outs and stalwarts who keep the spirit alive and Pollard needs to be a part of it, both as an artist with his work in the bins and as a customer at the counter.
Here’s a song about it. It’s a rocker that plays to the reunited 90s line-up of Guided by Voices’ strength as a garage band. This shit POUNDS.
Also, extra points for inspiring the name of a real life record store, Planet Score in St. Louis, Missouri.
85. “Real” (Guided by Voices, Wish in One Hand, 1997)
Let’s keep the record nerd talk going! A band’s hidden gems are always a little extra special because… they just ARE. This is how record collectors and old indie rockers think (“Yeah, that’s a cool song, but have you heard the B-side? It’s even better!”). As of this writing, the only place to get this heartbreaker is still a low-budget 7″ that hasn’t been in print since 1997. The first version of “Teenage FBI” is on the same record, but I say it’s overshadowed by one of the few Pollard songs that I would classify as make-out music. It also feels very 80s to me. I hear this and and I want to take Molly Ringwald to the prom. In my world, that’s a compliment.
84. “A Year That Could Have Been Worse” (Teenage Guitar, More Lies From the Gooseberry Bush, 2014)
When everyone decides to retire “Auld Lang Syne” and replace it with this as the top New Year’s Eve standard, I’m ready. It originally came out as a Guided by Voices B-side (sung by Mitch Mitchell), but the keeper is the version that came shortly after from Pollard’s one-man-band project.
I can think of only two Pollard songs that are explicitly holiday-related. The other is “What Begins On New Year’s Day” (I don’t think that “Christmas Girl” is about Christmas). Both are about the New Year. which is perfect. It’s a time of drinking, as well as reflection and looking forward, all of which are major Pollard themes.
83. “Paradise Is Not So Bad” (Lifeguards, Waving at the Astronauts, 2011)
Doug Gillard looms large in Pollard’s body of work. Their chemistry has produced piles of classics, some of which are on their Lifeguards project. Gillard creates the music, Pollard writes songs to go on top. The first album, Mist King Urth, came out in 2003 and it evokes early 1970s prog. Their second album came out eight years later and sounds like that same band exactly eight years later. Waving at the Astronauts captures a specific style, which is prog-rockers adapting to new wave. That was a big thing back in the day. Yes teamed up with The Buggles. Genesis sneaked modern pop singles into the middle of their prog wanderings as they worked their way up to being one of the biggest groups of the 80s.
Gillard’s music on the opening track is total pop, but from a “band” who can’t help but be ambitious along the way. Most young skinny-tie upstarts wouldn’t write a song that progresses like this. It’s also prime sonic real estate for Pollard to throw down an anthem and that’s exactly what he does, It’s a rousing “RIP rock/long live rock” statement.
82. “Asteroid*” (Circus Devils, Laughs Last, 2017)
The final song on the final Circus Devils album and in heaven everything is fine. Todd Tobias’s eerie synth piece provides the base for an eerie Pollard song about how something can be both destructive and beautiful at the same time. It lays out a complex idea in under two minutes and in a set of lines so short that they could have been jotted down on the back of a gas station receipt. As a piece of writing, it’s brilliant. As the send-off for a uniquely crazy project, it’s perfect.
81. “Miles Under the Skin” (Robert Pollard, Coast to Coast Carpet of Love, 2007)
Speaking of Todd Tobias, I haven’t counted, but it’s my guess that he has the most credits in the Pollard catalog of anyone (outside of Bob himself, obviously). There’s about a ten year stretch of Pollard’s work when Tobias was involved in nearly everything, even if he was only the recording engineer. An artist as busy as Pollard needs go-to guys and Tobias was the ultimate go-to guy. Sometimes he’s the co-star, sometimes he’s the key grip.
Tobias’s work as one-man-band on the solo albums is so much fun because you get to hear the Circus Devils guy stretch out into totally different sounds. I love the idea of Pollard hearing Ringworm Interiors and thinking that this guy might could also pull off pretty pop arrangements if you ask nicely.
“Miles Under the Skin” is one of the many glorious results of this partnership. It sways and it soars. I have no idea what the lyrics are about, but I’m feeling good anyway. That’s exactly what pop music is supposed to do.
It annoys me that there’s not more Coast to Coast Carpet of Love on this list. I may boycott my own website over it. The cozy pop singer-songwriter vibe of that album felt right in 2007. By then, it was clear that Pollard’s solo stuff wasn’t going to ring the bells in the town square like Guided by Voices did. Brand names are powerful. Pollard would embrace that in time. Meanwhile, the solo records that he continued to make showed no signs of frustration. If his fate is to make jewels for a rabid cult, that’s a noble way to enter your 50s.
80. “Everybody Thinks I’m a Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking)” (Guided by Voices, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, 2004)
Making a living off your art is a dream come true, but it can get lonely, as well. Everyone’s living the normie life while you haven’t left the house in days. You’re detached. Young musicians might uproot and move to cities with more happening scenes and connect with other bohemian types, but Robert Pollard didn’t do that. Dayton, Ohio is his home, he’s 46–his age when GBV recorded this song, at least–and he ain’t leaving. This is all his choice, but there’s a melancholy side and that’s what this song is about. In true Pollard fashion though, it refuses to whine. It reaches for the light. It aches and stretches and soars toward optimism. “Every day is another world”. It’s a classic anthem, the perfect mixed-emotion mood-setter for the “final” Guided by Voices album.
79. “An Earful O’ Wax” (Guided by Voices, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia, 1989)
In the end, Dayton, Ohio has been good for Pollard. Bands from New York City or Los Angeles don’t make music like this. You need a place where the nights are quiet and where you can see the stars after dark to produce this kind of yearning and this kind of air around the microphones. Midwestern townie rock is a little behind on the hippest new waves sometimes. When the bands play live (something that Guided by Voices didn’t even do for years), the head of Sire Records is a lot less likely to show up.
With obscurity brings freedom, though. Guided by Voices had no audience in 1989 and so they pleased themselves and they were serious about it. They were free to take any left turn and so they took several. One of them was into this gorgeous piece of outsider art-rock that wanders its way from a hushed beginning to an all-out classic rock guitar attack (played by the mysterious Steve Wilbur) in a little over four minutes. I hear it and I am transported.
78. “The Finest Joke is Upon Us” (Guided by Voices, Mag Earwhig!, 1997)
Every deep-digging Pollard fan has a song that they love and feel like they’re the only one who carries a torch for it–and this is mine. This smoky little number haunted me in 1997 and it still does. Pollard has an ear for beautiful, yet uncommercial, melodies. Mystical ballads. This is one of those. According to the credits, Pollard plays all of the guitar here, including the solo, and it sounds like it because it’s 100% melody. It’s a warm blanket around a song that I think is about death and its mystery (“Worlds of smoke/Distorted mirror broken/ Paradise is open/ But I choke”). It resolves in the idea that maybe dying is like finally getting a joke. Pollard himself seems fond of this song. It originally came out–this same version–in 1996 as one of the customary bonuses on the Japanese CD for Under the Bushes Under the Stars. It was also considered for his Not in My Airforce solo album (this track is just Pollard, John Shough and Kevin Fennell). He finally found a proper slot for it around the middle of the lovely suburban prog of Mag Earwhig!
It’s brilliant. It’s amazing. It moves me. It’s #78 on my list.
77. “The Brides Have Hit Glass” (Guided by Voices, Isolation Drills, 2001)
I’m a classic country music freak. I love George Jones and Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn and Ray Price and a bunch of other artists who tap into the beautiful thing that lies between blues and folk and the stars in the sky. I’ve also lived in Texas my whole life and I’ll take whatever credibility that you might give me for that to declare that THIS is Pollard’s most country song. And, yes, I know about Cash Rivers. That’s a parody, while this track is the real stuff.
“The Brides Have Hit Glass” is a true life divorce song. That’s country territory right there. Meanwhile, though the band go for classic guitar pop, Pollard sings his unusually straightforward words with a faint hint of twang (“I’ve got a laahf of my own”), as if that’s the way that you’re supposed to sing divorce songs. I can hang with that.
Twenty-two years after it came out, I patiently wait for country singers to start covering it.
76. “White Flag” (Guided by Voices, The Bears for Lunch, 2013)
In writing, a simple sentence is usually best. Pave smooth roads. Avoid clutter. Treat adjectives like they’re flies and swat as many of them as you can, though you’ll never get them all.
What I’m saying is that I appreciate Robert Pollard’s brevity. He knows when to let a song glide by in about ten lines in two minutes and then call it finished and that’s why “White Flag” hits so hard. It’s one of Pollard’s finest slow pretties and a song for those times in life when you don’t want to fight. For me, that’s nearly ALL of the time. I’m one of those people who hates conflict. I’m not perfect. I have no interest in pretending that I am. I don’t care about being right every time. That’s why I’m bad at social media, but I’m good at loving a song like “White Flag”. It’s only two minutes and fourteen seconds long, but it continues forever in my head.
75. “Indian Fables” (Guided by Voices, Fast Japanese Spin Cycle, 1994; also, Scalping the Guru, 2023)
On that subject, this is one of GBV’s “less than a minute” classics. It’s forty-two seconds of pure breeze. If you wish it was longer, play it again. That’s what I do. Other sub-minute greats that nearly made this list: “Hey Aardvark”, “Cool Off Kid Kilowatt”, “Ha Ha Man”.
74. “Pendulum” (Guided by Voices, Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, 1990)
My pick for the first great Guided by Voices anthem. It goes for the big catharsis and everything about it is fun, but it also becomes more haunting with time. “We’ll be middle-aged children, but so what?” means more to me at age 46 than it did when I was in my 20s. I also love the line “It’s society’s stipulation/ You’re a member of the freak generation”. “Freak generation”? Who talked like that after 1972? Pollard makes it cool, though.
I also need to mention the part of the Some Drinking Implied DVD when we see old videotape footage from the recording session for “Pendulum”. In it Pollard struggles to sing the chorus. He can’t do it. It needs a belter and our hero can’t get there mentally. In time, he nailed it well enough to make the album, but when Guided by Voices became popular and dipped into the back catalog, they didn’t play this one until 2004. By then, Pollard had sang around the world for a decade and had become comfortable in his skin as a performer. This song that was once hard for him to pull off became a fixture of one of the biggest Guided by Voices tours and it sounded great.
Take in the life lesson.
73. “(I’ll Name You) The Flame That Cries” (Guided by Voices, 1997, I Am a Tree)
What’s better than finding a great B-side? You have little or no expectations for these songs. If it sucks, eh, whatever. If it’s GREAT, holy shit! And this is a holy shit! song. To Pollard, the meticulous LP craftsman who is serious about the peaks and the valleys and the set-ups and the comedowns of the pure album experience, I guess there was no place on Mag Earwhig! for this powerful, three-and-a-half-minute art-rock dragon slayer. It packs as much muscle as any of the other tracks that feature Cobra Verde in their brief role as the new Guided by Voices back in ’97. It’s also full of mystique and has this great structure that starts off quiet for almost a full ninety seconds before it goes big and starts charging off to war. I’ve long called it GBV’s “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight”. Bonus points for one of my favorite song titles by anybody.
72. “Moses on a Snail” (Robert Pollard, Moses on a Snail, 2010)
I get the sense that Pollard’s own favorite songs among his work are the heavy, lumbering rockers. Lots of guitar, lots of atmosphere, lots of mileage in the live set. They’re arena art-rock for another era. The more adventurous stoners of 1975 would have been into it. The last few Guided by Voices albums lean into that sound, but one of Pollard’s best shots at it is a solo track, the menacing “Moses on a Snail”. Pollard’s song and vocals are a finely sharpened blade while Todd Tobias delivers some of his best one-man-band work, finding his inner stadium rocker. This is an epic track that never slips into wankery.
I love the lyrics. They’re about believers in things that take time to pay off. There’s a religious angle to that. Maybe a political one, too. Me, I’m stuck on hearing it as a song about artists who work at a slow pace while they continue to fascinate their audience. See Scott Walker or Fiona Apple or My Bloody Valentine (all of whom I like). They might put out one album every decade or two. This is the opposite of what Pollard does, so maybe he finds that interesting. Artists work differently from each other. That’s not a bad thing. Also, Moses on a snail is still Moses.
71. “Is She Ever?” (Guided by Voices, Tonics & Twisted Chasers, 1996)
It clocks in at a mere 1:03, but “Is She Ever?” has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It’s whole. It’s beautiful. It’s one of Pollard’s saddest songs and I won’t overanalyze it because I love its shadows too much.
What I CAN talk about is Tobin Sprout. He co-wrote this and every track on Tonics & Twisted Chasers. It’s all Sprout’s music with Pollard’s songs on top. Many overlook it because it only came out via mail-order in late 1996 and now the vinyl sells for black market kidney prices, but its tuneful chaos offers one of the best examples of what a classic combination Pollard and Sprout are.
On old Guided by Voices records, Pollard is the manic one who zig-zags from beauty to noise to pop to anthems while the Sprout songs sprinkled throughout are guaranteed sweetness. They’re gentle counterpoints to Pollard’s trip that only enhance the eccentric patchwork.
Sprout’s secret weapon though is that he also likes noise. His songs could be every bit as brief and damaged as Pollard’s (see all of this contributions to Vampire on Titus). They fit right in and Sprout’s weird side is a major voice on the Tonics album. He may be spitballing ideas, but they work with where Pollard’s head is at and the result is a fascinating last gasp of the lo-fi era.
After Sprout became a father and left the band in ’96, Pollard never really replaced him. No one else’s songs so consistently mingled with his on Guided by Voices albums. It’s not because he hasn’t worked with other good songwriters. Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. are great. My wild guess is that neither Pollard nor anyone else maybe wants to compete with the mysterious, singular thing that happens with Pollard and Sprout songs mix on a record with the Guided by Voices name on it.
70. “Girl Named Captain” (Robert Pollard, Not in My Airforce, 1996)
One of Pollard’s finest moments of album sequencing is on Not in My Airforce when the lo-fi, voice-and-guitar “Quicksilver” segues into the loud, instantly head-bobbing Kevin Fennell drum intro of “Girl Named Captain”. It plays like black-and-white turning into vivid color. Both songs are only the second and third tracks on the album and the friction between them powers up a record where anything can happen. It helps that “Girl Named Captain” delivers on its knockout entrance with this seductive little anthem. It hooked me the first time I heard it. It also hooked me the thousandth time I heard it. “I’m not in your dream/ Get out of mine” is in the running for Pollard’s best closing lines.
69. “Everyday” (Guided by Voices, Sandbox, 1987)
The sweetest snapshot of Guided by Voices in the late 80s. It’s the sound of nice boys devoted to pure jangle for three minutes with no hint of their basement weirdo side. This is all sunlight and melody, as well as open-hearted lyrics about breaking out of the daily routine. It’s easy to reach for an R.E.M. comparison here, but so many bands worked this sound back then–in the underground, in the mainstream, and everywhere in between–that Peter Buck and company no longer own it, if they ever did (here’s where I mention The Byrds). It was one of those sounds that was in the air in 1987 and “Everyday” hits like a refreshing breeze.
68. “How Wrong You Are” (Boston Spaceships, Zero to 99, 2009)
“Boston Spaceships was better than Guided by Voices,” Bob blurts. “There, I said it. I just think those albums are better–not better than all GBV, but in general consistency.”
That’s Robert Pollard quoted by author Matthew Cutter in the book Closer You Are, published in 2018, and I see no problem here. Boston Spaceships were freakishly great. The project lasted three years and produced five albums (one of them a double) and an EP. They arose from two things:
1) Pollard turned 50 and decided that his new solo work should reflect a mature singer-songwriter vision. However, he still liked to write ridiculous, catchy, rocking songs that throw maturity out the window–and so that became Boston Spaceships. It was a place to be ageless.
2) He had a brilliant collaborator in Chris Slusarenko. Working from Pollard’s rough boombox demos, Slusarenko arranged, interpreted, and played most of everything, with the exception of drums, which were handled by John Moen. Slusarenko understands Pollard’s famous “4 P’s” of influence (pop, prog, psych, and punk) and never stumbles in his attack. The rock songs are fierce. The ballads melt you. The pop songs chew some serious Bubble Yum.
The group were thousands of miles apart (Pollard in Dayton; Slusarenko and Moen in Portland, Oregon), but they sound like guys in a room bonding over old music in between bashing out masterpieces. Deep record collections are at the heart of Boston Spaceships, along with wicked humor and total confidence.
“How Wrong You Are” is one of many moments where it all comes together. The whole band are at their best. John Moen’s loud, up-front drums are nearly the song’s main character. Slusarenko makes a silly song even sillier with a surprise falsetto back-up chorus. Pollard’s melody and words are pure gold. Why do I love the line “I live a stunt man’s life/ Support my mother and wife” so much? I don’t know, but I do and I always will.
67. “Question Girl All Right” (Boston Spaceships, Zero to 99, 2009)
I want to keep talking about Boston Spaceships. They have more songs coming up here, but I’m impatient, which is a great way to approach the group because they’re so much fun. They rocked, but when it was time for a ballad, Slusarenko and Moen could generate the nicest breeze.
See this song, which is a perfect late 60s flower. I hear Donovan in it, while on the album it has a “Dear Prudence” effect in the way that it follows up a fast rocker with one of the prettiest things you’ve ever heard.
That’s something cool about Boston Spaceships. The songs rarely remind me of one thing (“Oh, that’s a Cheap Trick impersonation”, “Oh, that’s a pseudo Bowie song”). They’re not formulaic like that. Boston Spaceships combine things like dreams combine things. You’re back in your old high school, but somehow you’re at your present age and your ex-girlfriend from when you were 25 is there. You go to Algebra class, but when you walk through the doorway, it turns into your old neighborhood video arcade that closed in 1988.
That’s what Boston Spaceships songs are like. And it’s always a good dream.
66. “Buzzards and Dreadful Crows” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
Now that we’ve opened up a bottle of Boston Spaceships, I’m feeling bold enough to start pouring Bee Thousand shots.
I love Robert Pollard’s track 2’s. The second song on his albums will typically clash with the first song. If one’s fast, the other will be slow. If one’s an anthem, the other will be weird. It’s way of telling you that this ride will take an unpredictable swerve or two. There are a bunch of good ones, but this is the classic for most. If the technical rough patches of “Hardcore UFOs” confused you, this powerful rocker swoops in afterward to let you know that, yes, this band does know what they’re doing.
65. “Red Cross Vegas Night” (Robert Pollard, The Crawling Distance, 2009)
One of the most pants-wettingly gorgeous tracks from Pollard’s “mature solo albums” phase, all of which feature the brilliant work of Todd Tobias as the one-man-band, producer, and arranger. There’s stadium ballad potential here, but also a hint of prog in how the crescendos unfold. This isn’t a make-out song. It’s too mystical and sad. It’s a 1974 art-rock hit that got lost and wound up on a Robert Pollard solo album thirty-five years later.
64. “Back to the Lake” (Guided by Voices, Universal Truths and Cycles, 2002)
During the promotion for Isolation Drills in 2001, Robert Pollard was already talking in interviews about his vision for the next GBV album, which was going to be full-on prog. He was done chasing after a radio hit. Two albums of that was enough.
The result, Universal Truths and Cycles, has prog moments, but it’s more a 19-song kaleidoscope of everything that Guided by Voices is. Prog is a part of it, but so are ultra-short songs AND a few radio-ready singles. If Isolation Drills blew up big and the mainstream wanted more GBV, I think Pollard would have still gone “prog”, but he was also armed with the infectious “Back to the Lake” to sell it.
What I love most about it though is that this one of Pollard’s dad songs. It’s a message to his kids to pick up the phone and call him back once in awhile. I was really bad about that when I was in college. Every time I hear this song, the guilt hits me all over again, but this killer piece of pop makes it go down easy.
63. “Postal Blowfish” (Guided by Voices, King Shit and the Golden Boys, 1995)
All of my favorite bands are good for a trashy rocker from time to time. I am a trash-brain and I like junk. I love songs that rock. I love songs that don’t mean anything. And I’m totally cool with it if the main riff sideswipes Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore”. I’ve been listening to this song for years and I still don’t know what a “postal blowfish” is. Never thought about it. Don’t need to know. I just like all of this raging electricity.
Stick with the raw, basement version on King Shit and the Golden Boys. The studio take that landed on the Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy soundtrack album is more timid-sounding and not as good.
62. “Harrison Adams” (Robert Pollard, Motel of Fools, 2003)
Sometimes I think that Pollard’s prettiest songs are his weirdest songs. Alongside the lo-fi cries in the night, prog workouts, big anthems, and psychedelic craziness, Pollard also writes songs that show that he could be another Jimmy Webb or David Gates if he felt like it. These gooey pop melodies reveal the depth of the well. You could make a great mixtape of Pollard’s potential AM Gold. A lot of those songs are on his solo records. “Touch Me in the Right Place at the Right Time” and “Imaginary Queen Ann” leap to my mind right away. Neither are on this list, but I wish that they were. “Harrison Adams” makes the list because it’s definitive. It’s a total swooner with some crazy words (“Harrison Adams/ Son of a jack poker/ Panting like a ram worker/ Arise”). If you’re gonna go deep with Pollard records, get used to that.
61. “‘Wished I Was a Giant'” (Guided by Voices, Vampire on Titus, 1993)
Lo-fi was cool in the 1990s. Small press 7″ records and LPs put out by the likes of Noiseville and Siltbreeze, to name two of a jillion record labels, were the soul of a new legitimacy for homemade music. The enthusiasm for lo-fi was a reaction to 1980s ultra-slickness. It was hip to crave tape hiss and imperfections. The more fucked-up something sounded, the more refreshing it was. (Note: The Tiny Idols series fills part of the void of for a 90s American indie rock Nuggets, but we could use a lot more.)
It wasn’t a simple fashion trend. Lo-fi indie rock expanded horizons and revealed new worlds. A generation of listeners were deeply effected by this. I’m one of them.
That said, to most of the bands, it was simply practical. It wasn’t a cause. It was a cheap method for recording. When they had the opportunity to make something more polished, they took it (while sometimes their fans missed the hiss). Guided by Voices were no different.
One thing that stood out about GBV though, was how much they liked to deface their songs. They would leave in jarring noises and put out train-wreck takes. Not everyone likes that, but I always instinctively interpreted that as a test for the song. Can it survive a vocal track that sounds like the singer is in a tin toolshed fifty feet away from the mic?
In the case of “‘Wished I Was a Giant'”, yes. It’s a powerful opener, though not friendly to all ears. It has a great vocal melody, but the record does its best to hide it.
The hack criticism of this sound is that it’s lazy. The band didn’t care. They belched into microphones and then handed the results over to the label. And the label didn’t care either. They then put up a bunch of money to press it up and release it for an audience who also didn’t care.
All of that is nonsense. Vampire on Titus was the first Guided by Voices LP put out by a real label. It was the first Guided by Voices LP that stood a chance at reaching a real audience. Pollard cared about everything on it, I have no doubt. He was a year away from taking a crazy risk by quitting his job (while married with two children) to make music.
So why does the first song on an important album sound like THIS? Because it was the 90s. This sound was interesting. This sound was different. This was music done all wrong and that was how a lot of us liked it.
60. “Dusty Bushworms” (Guided by Voices, Get Out of My Stations, 1993)
Then there are home-recorded songs that are perfect as is and there’s no need to apologize. Don’t touch a thing. This lullaby is one of those.
59. “Things I Will Keep” (Guided by Voices, Do the Collapse, 1999)
I like Do the Collapse, but none of its singles make this list. “Surgical Focus” came close, but over time it’s clear to my weathered soul that “Things I Will Keep” is that album’s greatest song. It’s the most subtly beautiful melody, yet it’s not something that the old lo-fi Guided by Voices that we just talked about would have pulled off as well. “Things I Will Keep” calls for a neat, clean punch. Ric Ocasek’s production floats every note on a moonbeam. Meanwhile, the words hit harder when you get older. This is a song about the things that you remember over time. Those memories that you cling to no matter how many years pass. The stuff that can overshadow the regrets and the mistakes. They’re not always big moments. Sometimes they’re quiet moments that we might not share with others (because they often wouldn’t make any sense to them). We all have them. I have mine. “Things I Will Keep” is such a great song because it captures something universal and does so in a gorgeous song that could only have been written by someone who’s lived a little.
58. “Not Behind the Fighter Jet” (Guided by Voices, Mag Earwhig!, 1997)
Mag Earwhig! was controversial when it came out. Not everyone liked the move away from lo-fi, Not everyone liked its suburban prog. And not everyone liked that Pollard changed the whole damn band to get there. Still, artists must do what they do. Sometimes it means hard choices and that’s what this song is about. It’s about taking risks and going with your gut. “I’m not behind the fighter jet/ I’d much rather back a simple girl”. The “fighter jet” is what other people want from a popular artist and the “simple girl” is his vision of what he wants for himself. You can’t miss a fighter jet, but you can lose a simple girl–and it can happen so easily. One second, she’s there; the next, she’s gone. You may never find her again. That’s why she’s so valuable. She’s the muse. She’s why you’re here. She’s the one who talks you into a bold leap like Mag Earwhig! Plus, the song just rocks.
57. “Physician” (Guided by Voices, Surrender Your Poppy Field, 2020)
Robert Pollard was 62 years old when Guided by Voices released this beast, but you’d never know that from listening to it. “Physician” is full of manic energy and smartass attitude. It begins like power pop and then you notice that it doesn’t settle on a chorus–and then it starts changing, but never in an indulgent way. No, it’s all in the service of rocking over three-and-a-half minutes. The lyrics are an ode to the doctors who invent and prescribe the drugs that cure the menace of erectile dysfunction. It’s Pollard’s “Doctor Robert”, but for dick pills. It’s an old man’s topic, but this music is ageless. There is no fountain of youth, but it turns out that rock ‘n’ roll is pretty close… if you can keep it up.
56. “Airs” (Robert Pollard, Honey Locust Honky Tonk, 2013)
Pollard likens the closing songs on his records to the end credits of a movie. When I think about that, “Airs” leaps to my mind right away. The Honey Locust Honky Tonk album is a western movie, a psychedelic carnival ride, a rock record, and a concept album that reflects a life cycle (it’s also one of Pollard’s very best solo LPs). The first words in the first song are “A boy arrived in the world today”. From there, the whole thing goes from playful to more wise and grizzled.
Its closing three songs are a piece of life advice (“Real Fun is No One’s Monopoly”), an anthem about facing death (“It Disappears in the Least Likely Hands (We May Never Not Know)”, in which the “song” is nothing but the title powerfully repeated over and over because maybe that’s all there is to say about The Big Inevitable), and then a beautiful end credits that stirs up complicated feelings of reflection (“Airs”).
When I first read Pollard talk about his “end credits” approach to album closers, it resonated with me right away. I ALWAYS sit through movie closing credits. As a kid, I watched Star Wars movies on VHS so much that I eventually became fascinated by the end credits because they were so LONG. Ten minutes? More? I never timed them. All I know is that the endless scroll of names made my 4th grade self ponder the enormity of what I just saw. A crew of thousands was needed to make this thing that I spent my Saturday afternoon watching and that became interesting to me.
End credits are a place to stay seated and think Whew! What a ride that was! until the very last second that the screen goes dark.
“Airs” is a great LP closer because it’s not just the end of an album, but it’s also the end of a life. When my own screen goes dark and it’s all over, I wouldn’t mind if it feels exactly like this song.
55. “Doughnut for a Snowman” (Guided by Voices, Let’s Go Eat the Factory, 2012)
My favorite of the six Guided by Voices 90s lineup reunion LPs is the first one, Let’s Go Eat the Factory. It’s the most psychedelic and screwy. There are many brilliant tracks on it, but it’s also a record that’s powered by the friction between the songs and how they all hang together. I waffled on how to represent it here. For awhile, I was gonna be cool and go with the stark beauty of “My Europa”. Then I switched to “Chocolate Boy” for its 80s college radio vibes. But I was stalling on my way to admitting that “Doughnut for a Snowman” is the winner. It’s stoner bubblegum pop. Silly, pretty, and chilled out. It would be a perfect 1910 Fruitgum Co. album cut. Instead, it’s a perfect Guided by Voices song.
54. “Storm Vibrations” (Guided by Voices, Universal Truths and Cycles, 2002)
I hear this as the conclusion to Pollard’s informal trilogy of heavy side 1 songs that were on Guided by Voices albums from 1999 to 2002. They’re mid-tempo, moody, stadium groovers that lean into the powerful studio sound that the band was nurturing and that Pollard liked to perform on stage. These often lingered in the live set well after other album tracks were dropped. “In Stitches” fills that role on Do the Collapse. “The Enemy” provides it on Isolation Drills. “Storm Vibrations” is that song on Universal Truths and Cycles and it’s the best of the three (though “The Enemy” missed this list by a razor’s edge; if this was a top 110 Pollard songs article, I’d slide it in there).
“Storm Vibrations” is an anthem that rumbles like, well, a storm. It explodes and settles down and then explodes again. Its mood is overcast and the wind between the notes is every bit as important as its moments of bombast. Pollard’s song is advanced-level confident swirls of melody (with one section lifted from “Try to Find You”, a Suitcase artifact from 1984) and the band kick it into action brilliantly.
I’m exhausted when it’s over, and yet the album isn’t even even halfway finished.
53. “The Vicelords” (Boston Spaceships, Let It Beard, 2011)
Speaking of album pacing, “The Vicelords” is the best side 4 opener in the Pollard stack. It’s a spectacular show of energy for the final stretch of an epic. It’s a theme song for a band called The Vicelords and it sounds like they rock like a motherfucker. The Monkees better go run and hide.
52. “Please Be Honest” (Guided by Voices, Please Be Honest, 2016)
One subplot in the story of Pollard’s music is his rejection of, and eventual peace made, with his band name Guided by Voices. Names are powerful. Names are signatures. Names get people in the room. By the time Pollard broke up GBV in 2004, the band had already broken up many times already. What he was really killing off (or trying to) was the name and all of its baggage and expectations. End it. Let it sit for awhile. See how it ages. In the meantime, go solo and do other projects.
He would return to Guided by Voices, but in small steps.
In 2008, he founded a new record label (still going today), which he called Guided by Voices Inc., a smirking acknowledgement of the truth about the name as a brand that’s stuck to him. In 2010, the mid-90s lineup of Guided by Voices reunited for an oldies tour (sparked by an offer from Matador Records to play at the label’s 21st anniversary event). This blossomed into six new albums under the name until its abrupt end in 2014, square in the middle of a tour. A dozen shows were cancelled. Fans were pissed off. It was some serious shit. Ten years later. it’s now just a story about an uncompromising artist and his left turns.
At the time, I thought that was the true end of “Guided by Voices” until two years later when Pollard revived the name yet again, but this time for a one-man-band record. He made two previous LPs like that, under the name Teenage Guitar, but this one was different. It was extra ambitious in every way. Pollard’s anthems were more full-bodied and so were his weird, droning moments.
It’s a not an album that I’d recommend to just anyone, but I think it’s a psychedelic masterpiece, fiercely uncompromising, a truly personal vision, and a beautiful way for Pollard to make it clear to the world that he was done running away from his brand. Robert Pollard is Guided by Voices and Guided by Voices are whatever the hell Robert Pollard says that it is.
No singles were released from Please Be Honest. There are no singles on it. “Kid on a Ladder” comes close, but the title track is my favorite. It’s a soothing, swaying radio hit from another dimension.
51. “My Valuable Hunting Knife” (Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes, 1995)
I judge songwriters by how free they are to write about silly shit. I love The Beatles’ White Album so much partly because it’s so silly. Some bands always go on about big issues and emotional crescendos. That’s fine, but my absolute favorite writers are ones who can sing about revolution and then in the next song talk about candy or their dog. These are the elite. These are the ones who bring what I consider to be the most uplifting message of all, which is that you can write a great song about anything. And it can be beautiful and a little strange and something that you never forget. See “My Valuable Hunting Knife” for proof. I’m sure that somebody somewhere reads a high-flying metaphor into it, but, to me, it’s a song about… well, a valuable hunting knife. And it’s a masterpiece and it gets me all gooey.
50. “Sixland” (John Shough, Count Us In / Sixland split 7″ with Robert Pollard, 2007; also Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now, 2009)
The Great Lost Guided by Voices Song. All that we have, as of this writing, is a cover version by John Shough, Pollard’s go-to recording engineer back in the day and accomplished songwriter/performer in his own right. Shough is one of the few people on Earth who has heard the Guided by Voices original (from ’94 or ’95 probably) because that tape has vanished. Poof! Nobody knows where it is. The bootleggers don’t have it. Last I heard, no one in the band has it. I certainly don’t have it. I cleaned out my bedroom closet last week. Wasn’t there.
“Sixland” is a real beauty that’s also pure mid-90s Pollard, which is why I think he hasn’t re-recorded it. It belongs to another time in his life. It’s a song from an artist in the midst of the heady experience of seeing his work become popular after years of obscurity (“Suddenly vans were approaching/ Unloading awfully quick/ Merchandise from the army of art”). Its subject is the artist’s soul and the fear of losing it when commerce gets involved. Its language is strange and lovely. Shough’s take is a warm ray of melody that would have been at home on a classic Byrds record. If a vintage GBV recording is ever unearthed and released, it WILL be an event for some of us. If that never happens though, this version does me fine.
49. “Males of Wormwood Mars” (Guided by Voices, Cool Planet, 2014)
Speaking of the 90s, old indie rock memories hit me hard in this gem from the Guided by Voices reunion era. Right now, it’s my favorite song from that period. It’s a brilliant piece of work that also has many things “wrong” with it. There’s no chorus, the lyrics don’t rhyme until the closing couplet, and the lines follow a loose meter–and yet it’s a total earworm! That sort of thing was top-tier coolness to us 90s indie kids. We loved pop songs, but we didn’t want the band to sound like they were trying hard. We were sensitive about slick production and radio ambitions. We hated that stuff. If a band could offer beautiful craft, but still sound like slackers, they had serious potential to end up in my record collection.
And I mean all of that in the best way. These days, I realize just how much of a gateway 90s indie rock was for me to new and different ways of thinking.
I would have loved “Males of Wormwood Mars” in 1996. Almost as much as I love it now.
48. “A Crick Uphill” (Guided by Voices, Hold on Hope EP, 2000)
I think the last mix CD I made–maybe the last mix CD anyone ever made–was in 2013. I asked a friend, who didn’t know Guided by Voices from Guy Fieri, to name her five favorite Beatles songs, straight off the top of her head. We were at a bar and not on our first drinks. Her choices: “Across the Universe”, “Octopus’s Garden”, “My Sweet Lord” (I know), “Lady Madonna”, and”When I’m 64″.
Later, I put together a mix of Pollard tracks that sounded at home with those five songs. The point wasn’t to find clones of them (what the hell is his “Lady Madonna”?), but rather to complement the effect of those songs together. The Beatles songs were the cheese and my Pollard mix would be the wine.
And my opener was “A Crick Uphill”. I don’t think I considered anything else. It sounds like Paul swiping a little of George’s religion and some of John’s bold absurdity, while also feeling competitive with Dylan and seasoning it well with his natural optimism to make pop greatness. When Doug Gillard’s electric lead chimes in after a little over a minute of the acoustic intro it could be the most 1966 moment in the whole GBV catalog.
47. “Space Gun” (Guided by Voices, Space Gun, 2018)
So, did my friend LIKE my Pollard mix? We exchanged a few nice text messages about it ten years ago and that was it. I never pushed the issue beyond that. When someone goes too hard on me to get into their favorite band, their efforts often have the opposite effect, so I try to not do that to others.
So what kind of listener gets hooked on Pollard? It helps a lot to like anthems. Soaring, fist-pumper guitar rock that could have come out at any point from the late 60s on up to the present. That stuff is basic to his DNA. While Beatles appreciation can be a good base for Pollard appreciation, The Who stand as the most fundamental influence. It goes beyond songwriting. Pollard’s very sense of space and time, how to build up and how to come down, is very Who, very Tommy, very Quadrophenia.
If I ever make friends with a huge Who fan who doesn’t know GBV, maybe I’ll ask for their top 5 and make a Pollard mix. I’ll bet that “Space Gun” ends up on it. It’s a powerhouse.
46. “Break Even” (Guided by Voices, The Grand Hour, 1993)
What people like can be unpredictable though, and Guided by Voices are a strange band. Sometimes the oddball records make the best entry points. For example, ME. My introduction was The Grand Hour EP (aka the cheapest GBV CD in the bin circa late 1995) and I have no problem saying that it changed my life. I was 19 and I knew fuck-all about lo-fi rock, but I knew about digging things that came from left field.
For some reason, I was an aggressively contrarian teenager. Old movies and old music were my bag. My little CD collection was all 60s rock and antique jazz. I was into Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, and The Beatles. I collected Jack Benny radio shows on cassette. I was on a mission to see every movie from the 1930s. My place was in the past. Kurt Cobain shot himself during my junior year, but I didn’t know who he was until he was dead.
By some miracle, I got a girlfriend in the middle of this and that pushed me to acknowledge the present. Radio rock (Alice in Chains and all that) was interesting for about five minutes. It wasn’t long before I needed to dig deeper. That’s how a creature like me does things. I bought magazines. I watched 120 Minutes on MTV. I had a beginner’s list of bands to try out from “the fringes” and Guided by Voices were on it.
They haunted me right away. The lo-fi sound on The Grand Hour reminded me of the jazz from 1929 that I loved. The songs reminded me of The Beatles, but a mutant version of them. Guided by Voices felt good. I needed more.
The Grand Hour is a beautiful mess and “Break Even” holds up as vital slop-rock. Is it a punk song? Maybe, but it’s too psychedelic. Is it a psychedelic song? Maybe, but it’s too punk. It’s a grandiose freakout, the likes of which I’d never heard before and it will always be a major song for me.
45. “The Best of Jill Hives” (Guided by Voices, Earthquake Glue, 2003)
Guided by Voices couldn’t break the radio when they tried during the TVT years from 1999 to 2001 and so what? The band didn’t fail. The mainstream failed. What matters is if the band emerges from that pursuit with their soul intact, which GBV did. They hit the ground running and kept putting out visionary records (and playing packed shows, I’d like to add). Pollard also continued to write beautiful pop songs like “The Best of Jill Hives” that radio land might have loved if they got to hear it, but they missed out. We still got it though, and that’s a win.
44. “Wondering Boy Poet” (Guided by Voices, lo-fi version: Vampire on Titus, 1993)
Everybody who grew up in the 70s or 80s remembers the cartoon Wondering Boy Poet, right? I haven’t seen it since I was 6 years old, but I have hazy memories of it. I used to draw the Wondering Boy Poet a lot. He had a funny hat and bellbottoms and there were rainbows everywhere he went. My kindergarten teacher would put my work up on the wall.
And yes, folks, I am fucking with you. There was no such cartoon, but if there was, this gorgeous song could have been its opening titles theme. It’s not even a minute long and the lo-fi recording could pass for something excavated from an old film strip shown to grade school kids. Back in the day, teachers used to wheel out a goddamn film projector when they wanted to settle us brats down. I bet that Pollard remembers that. I credit his old job as an elementary school teacher for inspiring beauties like this. There’s a clean piano version on Suitcase that I have nothing bad to say about, but the guitar take on Vampire on the Titus is the one that makes me wonder, like a boy poet, if I really DID first first hear this when I was 6.
43. “Pop Zeus” (Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, 1999)
It seems crazy now, but Doug Gillard was controversial among fans when he became part of Guided by Voices. It was mostly people who missed the old band. They wanted Tobin Sprout back. Wounds were still raw. Some perceived Gillard as a guitar wizard dude who couldn’t wait to throw flashy leads all over GBV songs. Why did they think that? I have no idea. Clearly, they never heard Gem.
A lot of them did hear Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Department though, and then promptly shut up afterward. Gillard’s been beloved ever since. On it, he’s Pollard’s one man backing band (recording to 4-track) and occasional co-songwriter. It was an album that made it crystal clear to anyone with ears that Gillard loves songs and melodies. He can knock out a powerful solo when necessary, but he can also be gentle and rocking and everything in between. He’s been around the block and he gets Pollard’s reference points. Gillard composed the music for the most prog moment on the album, which would be “Port Authority”, AND he composed the music for one of the most pop moments on the album, which would be this one.
“Pop Zeus”. What a rave-up!
When I think about Guided by Voices in 1999, “Pop Zeus” is the first song that plays in my head. Do the Collapse was the centerpiece album that year, but the Speak Kindly LP is about the circus that surrounded it. Pollard was on a creative high. and so was Gillard, and they made a low-budget record about their world at the time. For me, it overshadows their much more glossy Ric Ocasek-produced release. Not only are the songs and arrangements brilliant, but it’s honest in a way that we’re not used to hearing. It’s a news report on the state of Guided by Voices circa ’99.
“Pop Zeus” became a live staple on the relentless tour back then and it reflects the excitement in the air around a band who’s out making things happen, slaying crowds, earning praise, living the life, and feeling damn good about it.
42. “Fly Away (Terry Sez)” (Boston Spaceships, Our Cubehouse Still Rocks, 2010)
A common trait of pop geniuses is that they can make us sing along, again and again, with total nonsense. I love nonsense. Great nonsense is a vital part of rock music. I’ve been singing along with “Fly Away (Terry Sez)” for about thirteen years now and I still have no idea what the fuck I’m saying. “Meadowlark Mazoo/ Is a rat fink kangaroo/ Back and forth from ark to zoo”, goes one part, I think (the album doesn’t have a lyric sheet) and I’m fine with that. It’s a brilliant Pollard melody, powerfully arranged by Chris Slusarenko, with words that are meant to land on interesting sounds and images and it’s up to you to make sense of it all. If you care about that, which I don’t.
Meadowlark Mazoo is a rat fink kangaroo. I believe it and I will keep singing it.
41. “Hardcore UFOs” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
It’s the gorgeous opener to a landmark album. It parts a curtain to reveal another world. It makes a Dayton, Ohio basement sound like one cosmic place. It’s a song that I’ve sang along with a thousand times. It’s a song that will feel good to me every time I hear it for the rest of my life.
But what I really want to talk about is that jarring tape machine flub at about fifty seconds in. You know it. You can’t miss it. The whole lead guitar just cuts out. It’s not a “happy accident”, it’s a mistake. Somebody screwed up. Somebody hit a wrong button, I guess. Now the track is ruined. Or is it?
Guided by Voices say no and I agree. The mistake doesn’t make the song better, but it does kick off the album in a powerfully unconventional way. I hear that mistake and I hear a band who are going to go with the best take they’ve got no matter what. I hear a band who believe in passion over perfection. I hear a band who understand that rock ‘n’ roll is about noise and if that’s not your thing, you’ll never like Guided by Voices so you may as well leave now.
Nothing cool is for everybody.
40. “Christian Animation Torch Carriers” (Guided by Voices, Universal Truths and Cycles, 2002)
Is this the best Christian rock song of all-time? Is it a Christian rock song at all? Over twenty years after I first heard it, I’m still not sure. Pollard’s words are a lovely mystery and I’m still pondering them. There’s an old expression, “There are no atheists in foxholes”. This song sounds to me like a reaction to that. Is it possible to believe in nothing bigger than yourself when mortality comes knocking? Pollard doesn’t preach, but I think he does ask a question. And it’s not a religious question. It’s a human question. Pollard asks it in an ambitious, show-stopper anthem. “Christian Animation Torch Carriers” is all thunder and lightning and waves crashing. It’s one of the most purely powerful displays of what the hard-touring early 2000s line-up of GBV could do.
39. “Big School” (Guided by Voices, Static Airplane Jive, 1993; also, Scalping the Guru, 2023)
One of the most furious blasts of optimism in the whole Pollard stack. How many bands have it in them to record a killer anthem for adults who go back to school to better themselves? And come off as 100% sincere about it? And pound it out with this kind of immediacy? If Pollard ever reveals that he wrote this song on an envelope and the band nailed it on the first take that same day, I’d believe it. This one of the easy highlights of the early 90s EPs.
38. “Edison’s Memos” (Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades, Choreographed Man of War, 2001)
When Pollard’s pretty pop sensibility and his prog sensibility collide (and they often do), I’m a happy boy. “Edison’s Memos” sounds at first like a guitar-based love ballad that Eric Carmen might sing, but then it gets heavy and menacing in the middle section in a way that the former Raspberry would never consider. And it all works. As track 3 on the album, “Edison’s Memos” follows two strong ravers with an ambitious display of wizardry that lets you know that this LP, which came out only a few months after Guided by Voices’ Isolation Drills, is serious. In Pollard’s 1970s youth, prog could BE pop. Yes and Jethro Tull had hit singles. Meanwhile, Todd Rundgren was a pop guy who went full prog at times. Pollard comes from a time when there were no lines between this stuff. “Edison’s Memos” is a glistening product of that.
37. “Town of Mirrors” (Robert Pollard, Kid Marine, 1999)
Kid Marine is one of Robert Pollard’s perfect albums. I’ve been listening to it since 1999. It confused me at first, but it ages better every year. Over time, I hear it more and more as his great mystical and mysterious singer-songwriter record. It’s art-rock made on a low budget and with a skeleton crew, but limitations like that are no problem to truly creative people. And Kid Marine is visionary. Its subject is mundane life in Dayton, Ohio circa the late 90s, but as told in strange, expressionist imagery and without a cliche in sight. Its songs are free to take any shape and be anything at any time while grounded in Pollard’s own naturally melodic guitar work. There are no pop hits on it, but I select “Town of Mirrors” as its best track because it’s the one that would most bring the house down if it was a showtune. From its lullaby opening and its bombastic finale, this whole thing hits hard.
What is a “town of mirrors”? Have you lived in your hometown your whole life? Or maybe you left and then revisited the place, however briefly, and found it to be a heavy experience? I think that “Town of Mirrors” applies to all of that. It stirs up complicated feelings.
36. “Pattern Girl” (Circus Devils, Sgt. Disco, 2007)
It took some Pollard fans awhile to take Circus Devils seriously. Their freaky debut made enemies right away (I love it, though nothing from it makes this list; it’s one of those sum of the parts sort of albums). The follow-ups sounded more like a conventional rock band, but then their fourth LP, Five, was another slime beast that sent many screaming in the opposite direction.
Something clicked though with Sgt. Disco, their fifth album, the double album. It was still odd, but it was also an epic. The monster had grown wings. The monster was expansive. In the right light, the monster could be beautiful–and “Pattern Girl” was Circus Devils at their loveliest. Todd Tobias’s shimmering, groovy music just feels like a classic is about to happen and then Pollard steps up with this dreamy psychedelic love song that I’ve never been able to play only once.
35. “Smothered in Hugs” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
I almost put every song from side 1 of Bee Thousand on this list. That’s the top GBV gateway album for a reason and every track in the first half reveals something a little bit different about the band. What “Smothered in Hugs” reveals is that these lo-fi freaks can get into a big, thick wall-of-sound groove. This is NOT a shoegazer song, but it does briefly glance in that direction (personal note: I bought Bee Thousand on the same day in 1996 that I bought In Ribbons by The Pale Saints, so the two albums are oddly linked in my silly old brain). One thing that makes this different from British introvert rock is that Pollard’s vocal is clear and placed right on top. You can hear every word of his song that I think is about forgotten heroes and suppressed stories. History is a little different depending on who teaches it.
34. “Tabby and Lucy” (Boston Spaceships, Let it Beard, 2011)
Boston Spaceships were always good for an anthem. They always sounded ready to rule the world, but if their fate was merely to make some of most fun rock LPs around for those who’ve breathed in plenty of dust from old records by Cheap Trick and The Who and The Move, that was okay, too. “Tabby and Lucy” is a BEAST. It’s huge on a “Glad Girls” level, but better. It’s every bit as infectious with a little more air between the notes. Also, radio airplay wasn’t on anyone’s mind. Instead, it’s only an explosive piece of pop dynamite on the last half of side 2 of one of the best double albums ever made. I’d say that things worked out.
33. “Watch Me Jumpstart” (Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes, 1995)
In 1995, Guided by Voices were lo-fi heroes. They were on the shortlist of bands that you MUST hear immediately to understand the exciting new breed of American indie-rock. They were cool. Even Sassy, a popular magazine back in the day for teenage girls, featured Guided by Voices in their monthly Cute Band Alert feature in August 1994.
In 2023, none of that shit matters anymore and what survives is that they were a great rock band. Simple as that. They could throw down. They had killer songs. “Watch Me Jumpstart” is one of those. It sounds like a 1965 Beatles song played at double-speed and it’s been improving my life for almost three decades now.
32. “Lightshow” (Robert Pollard, From a Compound Eye, 2006)
On my first listen to most Pollard albums, I’m usually lost. His songs can be odd and you often get lot of them at once. A few hooks might stand out, but the rest is foggy terrain that only clears as I continue to live with it. Gems reveal themselves gradually. I start to enjoy how some songs bounce off of each other. In time, I reach a point where my favorite changes everyday. Within a month, I’m usually calling the new record a masterpiece.
When I think about that, the first song that plays in my head is “Lightshow”. I barely NOTICED this song for years (in my defense, 2006 was a wild year for Pollard releases, even by his standards), but now it’s a withering masterpiece to me. It’s from side 4 of From a Compound Eye and like much of that rich, 26-song album, it’s not a verse-chorus-verse affair. It’s more like a gorgeously opening flower of prog-rock goodness in a mere two-and-a-half minutes. “Lightshow” is all free and flowing melody and a powerful set of words that I think are about naive arrogance, as filtered through a rock music perspective.
Robert Pollard didn’t become known for his music until he was 36. Others become stars when they’re 20 and it’s not always good for them. Maybe they self-destruct. Maybe their music suffers. Maybe they simply become brats who are disconnected from the rest of the world. For every enduring rocker who avoids that, there’s at least one young casualty who didn’t.
Meanwhile, music can reveal the state of the artist’s soul whether they mean to do that or not.
Or as Pollard brilliantly puts it, “They’re men first/ And they grow up fast on the side/ In the lightshow/ Where there’s no place left you can hide”.
31. “On the Tundra” (Guided by Voices, Propeller, 1992)
One of the most haunting things about 90s (and some 80s) Guided by Voices is that underneath all of the grime and noise and tape hiss, many of their songs sound like children’s music. They conjure up cartoon worlds of singalong melodies, but always a little screwed up in a psychedelic way. Pollard’s elementary school teaching job influenced that, no doubt. You can hear primary colors and crayons and construction paper in many of his old songs. There’s a great Guided by Voices covers album in the style of straight-up Sesame Street kiddie music that’s yet to be made. If anyone ever does that, I hope they include the dizzyingly melodic “On the Tundra”, This song is extra-special because it’s the last song on what was intended to be the last Guided by Voices album back in ’92. This seemingly upbeat take on a long journey was how Pollard thought he was gonna go out.
30. “If We Wait” (Guided by Voices, split single with Jenny Mae Leffel, 1993; also, Sunfish Holy Breakfast, 1996)
Robert Pollard is a collage artist. With only a few exceptions, his record sleeve art is his own work. He’s hooked on the contrasts between things and if you love his music, you enjoy contrasts, too. One of my favorite Pollard contrasts is how his stage persona has long been the mic-swinging, shit-talking Midwestern jock on his fifth beer and who gets drunker as the show goes on… and then as a songwriter, he creates some of the sweetest, most melodic, sensitive and vulnerable even, confections you’ve ever heard. I was around some jocks growing up. I never felt I had much in common with them, but if I knew that one of them wrote a beautiful psychedelic lullaby like “If We Wait”, that might have opened my mind a little as to how odd and surprising human beings can be.
As with many great Pollard songs, I couldn’t tell you what “If We Wait” is about. In the Jim Greer book, Guided by Voices: A Brief History, Pollard explains it as “Another getting-old song”. “Let’s drink and make rock”, he adds. Also, the middle part was inspired by an acid trip during which Pollard looked in the mirror and his face became his son’s face. Makes sense to me.
29. “Amusement Park is Over” (Guided by Voices, August By Cake, 2017)
Here’s an even finer specimen of Pollard’s balladry, as well as his mastery of the stadium-ready heartbreaker. He’s only gotten better at these with time.
28. “Gold Star for Robot Boy” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
I’ve lived with Bee Thousand for almost thirty years now. When you know an album well like that, you don’t need to play it much anymore. Maybe it even cools off on your shelf for a decade or so. Then one day, the mood hits you or you read something that sends you back. You put it on again and that’s when the really great records will be even better than you remember. Some powerful thing about it that hasn’t crossed your mind in a long time will leap forth and grab you. Me, when I play Bee Thousand again, I’m always newly impressed by how strange it is. It not only sounds strange; it looks strange. That sleeve art. Those song titles. I’m sure that there are people out there who can look over an LP tracklist and somehow NOT be madly curious to hear a song called “Gold Star for Robot Boy”, but I’m not one of those sad souls and neither probably are you. And then once you hear it, you’ve got to hear it again, and then again, because it’s a brilliant pop song, fat free, all chorus and all heart. Bee Thousand rewards explorers of its mystery with songs like this.
27. “Death of the Party” (The Keene Brothers, Blues and Boogie Shoes, 2006)
Tommy Keene’s gorgeous backing music is pure prom night sparkle and the song that Pollard lays on top brings this teen movie to its picture perfect climax. Hearts are flutterin’ like mad. I love lo-fi scumbag tape hiss Pollard, but there’s nothing like hearing him work with a polished, full-bodied piece of music that’s ready for prime time. The whole Keene Brothers album is like that and this is its best song. Keene’s very opening guitar chords freeze you in place. Meanwhile, Pollard’s lyrics deal in abstract imagery of loneliness and detachment, but there’s hope at the end. “And I cry so suddenly/ And laugh so loud”. What makes you cry suddenly? What makes you laugh loud? That’s what this song is about.
26. “Conqueror of the Moon” (Robert Pollard, From a Compound Eye, 2006)
Robert Pollard got me into prog-rock. I’m from the 90s indie kid generation who came up thinking that prog-rock was bullshit. Meanwhile, I’d barely heard any of it. I was a pipsqueak following the lead of the third generation punks, who didn’t care for all of that fantasy and mystique. So, Pollard’s interest in it, the music of his late 1960s and 70s youth, was an eye-opener for me and around 1997 I broke in my first turntable buying King Crimson and Genesis records from the used vinyl bins. Back then, you could get their whole discographies on LP for about $20 total. So I did that and I liked it. Robert Fripp and Peter Gabriel were great! Who knew? Robert Pollard knew. Then I knew and Guided by Voices songs made a whole new sense to me.
“Conqueror of the Moon” is my favorite piece of Pollard prog. He, with Todd Tobias, puts together a masterpiece that offers up at least five different “movements” in just over five minutes. Pollard has many songs like this, songs that play as a suite of ideas that blow by with such wit and economy that you might barely notice how strange the whole thing is at first. Pollard’s sense of brevity is there even when he gets expansive. They’re impatient epics.
Other songs that I love in this vein: “Silence Before Violence” (Pollard solo), “Sport Component National” (Guided by Voices), “Cats Love a Parade” (Pollard solo), “Inspiration Points” (Boston Spaceships).
100 songs is a tightly packed suitcase when it comes to Pollard’s manic output so none of those songs above are on this list, but “Conqueror of the Moon” is a must. Every section STINGS.
Also, I like to think that maybe, just maybe, some youngster out there has heard this and been curious about how the hell a song like this exists and then dug deeper into Pollard’s influences.
25. “Shocker in Gloomtown” (Guided by Voices, The Grand Hour, 1993)
The punk rock classic. It’s also my guess for the GBV’s most played live song. If you’ve EVER seen them, you’ve heard this. It’s a minute-and-a-half wonder always gets the kids jumping. It’s become so familiar over the years that it’s easy to dismiss, but don’t do that. Never forget this song’s speed and splatter. “Shocker in Gloomtown” will never wear out. It will always sound like the start of something exciting, which, as the signature song of GBV’s early 90s rebirth, it is. If the band never went anywhere after this, this would still be an essential underground nugget. It’s another “Louie, Louie”, another “Teenage Kicks”.
24. “The Blondes” (Robert Pollard, Is Off to Business, 2008)
Few in rock music stay creatively limber in their middle age and beyond. The young spitfire’s drive wears down. Most elder rockers put out two or three new albums a decade at most–and at least one of them is a Christmas album or vol. III of their interpretations of old standards. Robert Pollard is made of different stuff, though. He never stops and on his strange path, he’s written a pile of powerful songs about aging and mortality. He doesn’t get cute or didactic about it. Rather, he gazes over the cold precipice, again and again, and finds whatever poetry he can find there. It’s sad sometimes, funny other times. Nostalgic. Mystical. It comes out in rockers, prog-style wandering and ravishing ballads like this one. I think “The Blondes” is about the “no, this isn’t happening to me” stage of aging. It’s about decaying beauty. The person who desperately holds on to it, with make-up or surgery or whatever they do (“On your birthday grab a mask, run away/ Quickly and be born again”). It never works, but this sadness makes for a gorgeous song. Two other things that “The Blondes” is about: one of Pollard’s most soulful vocal performances on record and the warm arrangement by Todd Tobias. The Circus Devils guy did THIS? I still can’t get over it.
23. “Dusted” (Guided by Voices, Fast Japanese Spin Cycle, 1994)
I don’t like any critic who dismisses Pollard’s lyrics as scattershot gibberish. He’s a giant with words. There are everyday experiences and vivid daydreams in his songs. There’s insistent imagery and recurring themes as told in language that always feels like fresh air to me. His lines often give you something to puzzle over and the best listeners know that puzzling over things is a good time. “Dusted” is one of those songs that you hear and then it follows you around for awhile. It keeps buzzing around your head. The melody is lovely, but it’s driven by a brilliant, if enigmatic, set of words. I think that “Dusted” is a song about someone who gets a late start in life on realizing their dreams, but is set free by the pursuit, but maybe your take is different. There are two recordings of this song. I have no argument with the lo-fi one on Vampire on Titus, but you can hear the words better in the less fogged-up take on Fast Japanese Spin Cycle.
22. “Echos Myron” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
What song is more ecstatic to simply exist than this one? Guided by Voices were on the way up in 1994 and Pollard was over the moon about it. This moment called for old school British Invasion energy. Gerry and the Pacemakers were always so happy to be there. They appreciated every screaming girl. Everyone points out how much Pollard harmonizing with himself in “Echos Myron” sounds like Graham Nash in The Hollies, which is true. This song is in a rush. It opens in a rush. It ends in a rush. And what’s in the middle is frantic. “We’re finally here/ And, shit, yeah, it’s cool” is the main message. You couldn’t curse like that on Top of the Pops back in the 60s, but in lo-fi indie rock in the 90s, it was alright. Sweet song. Nice boys.
21. “Alex Bell” (Guided by Voices, Tremblers and Goggles By Rank, 2022)
This list is light on recent Guided by Voices songs, but don’t read anything into that. I love the latest GBV albums, but those songs have to compete for space here with songs that I’ve lived with for two or three decades now. The new stuff barely stands a chance, but it will eventually because Pollard’s songs grow with you. I listen to his records from twenty years ago, when he was in his 40s and now that I’m in my 40s, they make a whole new sense. They sum up so much of what I think about everyday, from mortality to nostalgia to feeling out of sync with the rest of the world.
Maybe in twenty years, I’ll start over with a new top 100 Pollard list and get deep into how the songs from Tremblers and Goggles by Rank and La La Land are keeping me spry. I hope so.
Right now, my thoughts about Pollard’s latest music amount to this: He’s in his 60s and his mind is still a psychedelic cyclone, but he also likes comfortable, reliable things. He doesn’t bounce between a variety of collaborators anymore. He likes these five guys. Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr., Mark Shue, Kevin March, and producer Travis Harrison. They’re the only people he’s worked with for five years now. There are no egos. No drama. Everyone’s been around the block. They get Pollard and they do cool stuff with his songs and they can do it quickly.
They’ve made nineteen albums together (fourteen as Guided by Voices, four as Cash Rivers and The Sinners, and one as Cub Scout Bowling Pins–and three of those albums are double-record sets) with more to come. It’s a new era and there’s so much of it that it’s all still settling in my brain, but I MUST acknowledge the majesty of “Alex Bell”.
It’s a tribute to Big Star, though it sounds nothing like Alex Chilton and Chris Bell’s old band (and, for that matter, it also sounds nothing like The Replacements’ song “Alex Chilton”). It sounds more like a five-minute atom bomb from a rock opera by The Who. Also, the lyrics don’t take an obvious approach. The opening verses sound like walking down the street. When it explodes at the end though, it all becomes (sorta) clear and that’s when you might see a grown man cry if you’re with me when this comes on.
How do you pay respect to an influence? Pollard does it in the loveliest way. What he does is talk about the air around the music, but without explicitly mentioning the band. His subject is what it’s like to wake up and exist and feel things after you’ve heard Big Star and learned about their tragedy.
Chris Bell died in a car accident in 1978 at age 27. Alex Chilton had a heart attack in 2010 at age 59. Big Star fizzled out around 1974 before anyone gave a shit. Their reputation would grow in time.
Now, here comes Robert Pollard in his mid-60s to talk about what Big Star still means in 2022 and there’s not a single cliche in his song and the band’s power and agility run at full-tilt for the whole trip.
Why does Pollard stick with these guys? Play this song as loud as loud as you can and listen to the answer.
20. “Where I Come From” (Guided by Voices, Suitcase, 2000; recorded in 1987)
Here’s a free idea for a Robert Pollard article. Someone take it, please. I would love to read a deep-dive piece about the essential Ohio influence on his music. How does he embody something uniquely Ohioan in the broad cultural sense? I want Sherwood Anderson references. I want a whole section about Ohio sports history. I’ve written a lot about Pollard’s music, but I can’t write that. I’m a Texan. I’ve spent three days of my life in Ohio. The best I can do is fit GBV into Ohio rock history, which I love (as a fan of Pere Ubu and Devo and The Electric Eels), but the topic needs more. It needs a Midwesterner’s touch.
That’s something I get curious about whenever I listen to this beautiful outtake from 1987. This is one of Pollard’s small town, working stiff, searching-for-meaning-in-life songs (“Work fifty hours/ Take frustrations out on the field”). It’s also one of the band’s great 80s moments, in the American indie jangle sense. It sounds like cassette decks and a life without cellphones and with R.E.M. coming to town next month. Also, the chorus is so good it could save your life.
19. “He’s The Uncle” (Guided by Voices, split EP with Superchunk, 1996; also, Hardcore UFOs, 2003)
When Guided by Voices became an indie rock sensation in the mid-90s, they reacted to it in a recognizably human way that was refreshing. Popular American rock bands at the time were supposed to be tortured by the attention and money. They were supposed to hate every minute of it. They were victims. It was trendy to act like Epic Records clubbed you in the back of the head with a contract when you weren’t looking. Whether that was a reaction against the proudly decadent 80s rock stars that the new breed replaced or merely something in the water for a generation, I’m not sure, but Guided by Voices were seasoned enough to be immune to it. They were HAPPY that people were listening. Pollard wrote great songs about how cool it was! When he did write from a vulnerable place about this strange new world he was in, there was still a triumph in it. You meet challenges. You don’t roll over and die. In “He’s the Uncle”, the challenge is being the older guys on the scene. Always being on the bill with bands ten years younger. Feeling sometimes maybe like you don’t belong (“We are not so cold, are we?/ They are not so bold, are they?/ And I am getting old, aren’t I?”). This song doesn’t mope about it, though. It finds the light and it finds it in less than two haunting minutes.
18. “Motor Away” (Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes, 1995)
It was hard, I know, but Guided by Voices being unknown for so long was good for them in the end. When they finally achieved success and were quitting jobs and going on the road and being profiled in every magazine, they really appreciated it.
A band of 23-year-olds who hit it big on their first or second album could never come up with “Motor Away”. It takes guys who’ve going at it for over a decade, were on their eighth album, and never thought that any of this would happen to be THIS excited. Even better, Pollard’s words aren’t explicitly about a rock band. “Motor Away” can be about motoring away from anything. We all will jump around and sing along with this great anthem for our own reasons.
17. “Your Name is Wild” (Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
I like Pollard’s dad songs, as in songs from the point of a view of a father (he has two kids). You don’t hear that in indie rock often, at least not as killer pop melodies. We talked about “Back to the Lake” already. Pollard’s got other good ones. Off the top of my head: “My Son Cool”, “Flesh Ears from June”, and “Kiss Only the Important Ones”.
THIS is the best one. “Your Name is Wild” is power pop at its most powerful. Also, “the useless fade in time” is great dad advice.
16. “Metal Mothers” (Guided by Voices, Propeller, 1992)
It doesn’t happen often, but I like when bands who aren’t rock stars (at least not yet) write songs about being rock stars. How they depict the fantasy is telling. Guns ‘n’ Roses have “It’s So Easy” from their early days, Oasis have “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, and Guided by Voices have “Metal Mothers”, which sounds nothing like either of those songs and is one of the most strikingly beautiful moments on Propeller.
Pollard was in his mid-30s here. He was an adult. He had kids. His rock star vision is that it’s free of the daily frustrations (“you don’t see no busted rain clouds watering up your days”) and you spend all day on your music (“so set in your ways/ and so fixed in your gaze”). He’s not angry or high on ego. He just wants to make his art.
In 1992, this was all a pipe dream. Never gonna happen. Guided by Voices were nobodies, self-releasing their records and not seeing many copies escape Dayton, Ohio city limits. Propeller was supposed to be Pollard’s last album. Maybe twenty people will ever even hear this song. That melancholy swirls through it. It’s what makes it so haunting.
Little did Pollard know that his personal triumph was coming up.
15. “Slick as Snails” (Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, 1999)
Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department is one of Pollard’s greatest albums and this puff of smoke is its best moment. Doug Gillard’s beautiful one-man-band arrangement is a sturdy hardwood floor for Pollard’s song about his new place in the music industry as he and Gillard put in the work to sell a major label album. He’s feeling good. He’s feeling lucky. He’s feeling like he earned this. He’s happy and he’s ready for whatever happens, or whatever doesn’t happen, in this new chapter.
I love everything about this song. I don’t know what Pollard and Gillard’s inspirations were, but to me it all sounds every late 60s Bee Gees. Their Idea album. Gorgeous melodies with lots insistent acoustic guitar back-up. I bet that Idea is on both Pollard and Gillard’s shelves. I bet that Pollard has five copies of it.
14. “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
In my world, Robert Pollard is no longer the lead singer of Guided by Voices. I am because I relentlessly sing along when I listen to his records. While making this list, I would sometimes stop playing the recording of whatever song I was writing about and instead sing it myself. It helped me when I got stuck sometimes.
“The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” is my pick for the most fun Pollard song to sing acapella in your living room while your cat stares at you. The dreamy acid-ballad melody rolls out so easily, as do its powerful words. Now, I have NO IDEA what the words mean (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pollard doesn’t either), but that’s fine. That just means that you can stop and enjoy how the words sound. The play of consonants and vowels. Listen to how the very title “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” tapdances on your tongue.
I recommend it. If you know this song, you should sing it now if you can. Privately. Just for yourself. It’s so beautiful.
13. “I Killed a Man Who Looks Like You” (Robert Pollard, Honey Locust Honky Tonk, 2013)
Robert Pollard songs are a little odd, but if I had to pick one that I would play for anybody, this might be it. “I Killed a Man Who Looks Like You” should have been a great moody jangle-pop hit in 1987. Or maybe it should have issued from AM radio in 1967. While we’re fantasizing, this is the Pollard song that I’d most like to hear Johnny Cash sing. Too bad that Cash died ten years before this knee-weakening acoustic-driven masterpiece came out on one of Pollard’s greatest solo albums. Shout out to Todd Tobias and his perfect, fat-free arrangement and one-man-band performance. This was the fifteenth Pollard solo album for which he was the musical right-hand. He was an expert at it at this point and everything he does is right. Also, I’ll never be truly happy until I hear this used somehow in a great Western movie, particularly one that ends on a tragic note.
12. “Acorns & Orioles” (Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
I first heard this song about twenty-seven years ago and I think its chorus has whispered itself in my head almost everyday since. It’s not only an unforgettable melody, but so many mundane daily experiences remind me of this song.
“I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”
The way that Pollard sings that simple line will not leave my brain. It was there in 1996 and it’s still here in 2023. It doesn’t look like it’s going away.
That line reflects something that an artist might think, but it’s also something that anyone who makes a passionate argument might think. Even a salesman might think of it. Anyone who communicates (ie. all of us) might feel it. The power of the song is that you can read anything into it and my take is that it’s not necessarily a sad or frustrating thought.
I’ll repeat it: “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”
When you understand that you can’t tell someone anything that they don’t already know, then a challenge opens up. Tell them what that they already know, but do it in a new way. That’s how it goes in rock music, at least.
Also, it’s simply a gorgeous piece of work. It’s one of those songs that looks good naked and so GBV kept it that way. Its sound is merely a voice, an acoustic guitar, and the inspired decision to run an eerie hum beneath it. As a David Lynch fan, I like a little ambient whooshing to accompany my epiphanies.
“Acorns & Orioles” is a fixture in my life. It’s always there, even if I’m not thinking about it. It’s like, well, acorns and orioles.
11. “Tourist UFO” (Boston Spaceships, Let it Beard, 2011)
Robert Pollard often refers to “Don’t Stop Now” as “the ballad of Guided by Voices”. In that spirit, I submit “Tourist UFO” as the ballad of Boston Spaceships. Between ending Guided by Voices in 2004 and the 90s line-up’s successful 2010 reunion, Pollard toured lightly for his new solo albums and went out briefly with Boston Spaceships in 2008. The shows were well-received by the fanatics, but without the Guided by Voices brand name, the heat wasn’t there. The rowdy old crowds didn’t show up. For Pollard, maybe it felt too much like starting over. At least that seems to be what “Tourist UFO” reckons with. It sketches out images of a band on the road, but the scene isn’t exciting. Something’s wrong. “Places were strange and sleazy.” In the last verse, Pollard asks “Tourist UFO/ Did your best come close?” and the answer is no, but a lovely guitar solo guest spot from J Mascis at the end makes it all okay. This song doesn’t whine. Its beautiful melody doesn’t allow that. Even when things don’t work out, there’s dignity in trying.
Fun fact: Let it Beard was not intended to be the final Boston Spaceships album when they made it, but Pollard abruptly closed the curtain on the project when he began recording with Guided by Voices again. I believe that Chris Slusarenko had even received demos for the next Boston Spaceships album when Pollard decided to abort the mission. It was heavy news at the time, but it all worked out. Slusarenko and John Moen went on to form a great band called The Eyelids. Those lost Boston Spaceships songs surely came out in some form later. Let it Beard is one of the greatest final albums of all-time.
10. “Subspace Biographies” (Robert Pollard, Waved Out, 1998)
I need to level with you. All 100 songs on this list are perfect to me. My ranking is loose and arbitrary. I arranged everything mostly for effect. Don’t ask me to explain why my #62 is so much better than my #87 (just to pick two random numbers). I don’t have an answer.
But now it’s top 10 time and we need to get serious. A top 10 should mean something. The ghosts of Buddy Holly and John Lennon just knocked on my door and they want me to explain this Robert Pollard guy and they only have time for ten songs.
I’ll start with “Subspace Biographies”. Every other Tuesday, I consider these three minutes to be the most perfect introduction to Pollard’s style out there. It’s a mixtape starter, for sure. The raw song is simply one verse and then a chorus that attacks you over and over, with a keyboard hook that pops up throughout like a UFO on strings (live, Pollard would sing the keyboard part). Meanwhile its brief words are both nonsensical (“Stoned Comedian Ringo”?) and powerful (“There is nothing worse th’n an undetermined person”; the apostrophe in “th’n” is straight from the album’s lyric sheet).
The brilliance of it is that it doesn’t feel incomplete in the slightest. I’ll repeat something I said in my “A Salty Salute” write-up above: “Subspace Biographies” is a simple thing with a strange power. It doesn’t need another line. It doesn’t need a more fleshed-out structure. It’s exactly what it should be. Also, it’s just about the catchiest thing you’ll hear in your whole life.
9. “Don’t Stop Now” (Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
Going back to “A Salty Salute” one more time, I talked earlier on this list about how it’s the classic GBV live show opener. In that same spirit, I submit “Don’t Stop Now” as the classic closer. The best way to hear it is with a crowd about two hours into a show when people are singing along and spilling their drinks and bonded for the moment by music. Complete strangers have thrown their arm over my shoulders more than once at GBV shows. When Guided by Voices went on their “farewell tour” in 2004, this was the safe bet for the final song. As I noted above, Pollard took to introducing this on stage as “the ballad of Guided by Voices”. It’s a righteous anthem for not quitting. Enduring. Persevering. Pollard is an expert at that and when he talks about it, you listen.
8. “Your Lights Are Out” (Guided by Voices, Zeppelin Over China, 2019)
What keeps me following someone’s music for thirty years is vitality. I want signs of life. I want to hear that it’s possible to last that long and still give a damn. Natural wear and tear is fine. Visions can evolve. New sounds, new collaborators, and new approaches are cool. I’ve never been one to pine for any (good) band to sound like their old stuff. What I’m looking for are bright lights from the road ahead. Can we still make a killer double album in our 60s? Can we still function as an artist at that age, as opposed to someone stuck doing a job? Can we still keep up our energy?
“Your Lights Are Out” is a late-period Guided by Voices song that gives me ALL of the good vibes. When Pollard talks about his influences, the same circle of bands come up every time. The Who, The Beatles, Big Star, Devo, Genesis, and Wire. “Your Lights Are Out” highlights Pollard’s Wire roots. I’ve spent most of the last three decades hearing him play around with pop melody and post-punk and this song stands among his most beautiful blends of the two.
7. “The Official Ironmen Rally Song” (Guided by Voices, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, 1996)
In ’96, one of the most uncool things an American indie band could do was have any “rock star” ambitions. Indie rock was supposed to be the opposite of that. However, Guided by Voices got something of a pass on this. This was partly because of their age, partly because of their intriguing back story, partly because the band wisely didn’t try to look like rock stars, and partly because Robert Pollard’s “I have arrived” song was this piece of brilliance.
“The Official Ironmen Rally Song” is a rock star’s statement. From the opening verses, he directly addresses his audience as if we’re endless throngs who hang on to his every word. His message is that he doesn’t have a message (“Crawling people on your knees/ Don’t take this so seriously/ You just have to hum it all day long”), but he also understands the life-affirming power of rock and then boldly asserts that he’s the guy who’s gonna bring it and keep bringing it. I don’t recall a lot of us indie kids back then arguing with that.
Also, as the advance single from Under the Bushes Under the Stars, this was the first taste of “studio” GBV for many people–and it was perfect. This song needs to sound big, it needs a guitar solo and the vocals need to sound like God echoing off of mountaintops.
6. “Game of Pricks” (Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes, 1995)
I wasn’t ready for Alien Lanes when I first heard it in ’96. It was so cluttered and crazy and confusing. I didn’t get this band or what they were doing or what anything meant. Did I like it? Did I hate it? I didn’t know how to react to this weird creature at all. What kept me interested was one song. Track 7. Even then I knew it was perfect.
“‘Game of Pricks’? That’s the title they gave to the best one?” More confusion!
It was a beacon that kept me digging. If this nutcase band have a song that great, what else hides in this 28-track maze that I’m not understanding right now? So I kept listening and now fifty years later here I am as the biggest GBV fan on my block. Is this a song about the pitfalls of the music business? Is it a great love-gone-wrong song? These stinging words and perfect melody could lead you either way.
PS: Alien Lanes is one of the most killer albums ever and today I can sing the whole thing from memory, EVEN the instrumental. I love that it confused me when I was 19 because it ended up changing me once I got it. After Alien Lanes, I listened to music differently. It taught me to enjoy mystery and noise. It also showed me that an album isn’t merely a stack of songs. It’s about how songs work together and set up each other and come down from each other.
5. “Wish You Were Young” (Mars Classroom, New Theory of Everything, 2011)
As I keep saying, Robert Pollard’s songs become more relevant and reveal new dimensions with time. You come for the hooks and melodies; you stay for the reflections on aging and morality that you’ll only understand when you clock some serious mileage yourself. Music is how Pollard deals with it (he was 53 when this song came out)–and his music is how some us who’ve been following it forever deal with it, too. The triumph of these songs is that they’re often mysterious and beautiful rather than heavy-handed, pretentious or obvious. “Wish You Were Young” is a shining example of this. I can’t explain what every mystifying line means, nor would I want to if I could. My only advice is to close your eyes and listen. Listen to the heavenly music bed by Gary Waleik (of Big Dipper) in which guitar and organ trade the spotlight like singers in a lush duet. Listen to how Pollard locks into it and walks on air. There are good things about getting older. I definitely don’t miss being a 20-year-old idiot. Still there are almost daily moments when I feel out of touch or when I’m aware that I don’t have the energy that I used to have or when I hear about someone five years younger than me dying of a heart attack. That’s when I kinda wish I was young. That’s when I need to hear this song.
4. “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out” (Robert Pollard, Not in My Airforce, 1996)
How many times have I used the word anthem on this list? About a million. That’s because it’s one of Pollard’s specialties and this may be his finest pure thunderbolt. It’s four minutes long, but it feels like an expansive epic due to its lovely sense of space and air and time. It’s full of tension, but it also breathes. It sounds like the culmination of a life of wearing out Who LPs and writing thousands of songs. Pollard came a long way to tell us “live it up before you pass away”. It’s a simple message, but still maybe the wisest advice there is as long as you also listen to the closing line, repeated (shouted!) over and over: “I feel life passing on by us”. Far from downbeat though, it’s a call to action. Live it up, but in the service of life, not as an escape from it. That’s the place to be. If you’re not there, this song can convince you that you can get there.
3. “I Am A Scientist” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
Robert Pollard will never write another “I Am a Scientist”. That’s not to say that it that was all downhill from here. No, the progression of art and music is not linear like that. Rather, this song is singular because it will never be 1994 again and Pollard will never be the person that he was then again. He will never be the weirdest new rock star on the scene, a 36-year-old schoolteacher with a wife and kids and a large body of work that nobody noticed until now. Its place toward the end of Bee Thousand is perfect. After all of the strange moments and mysterious words on that record, the visionary of the band steps forward to finally explain himself in plain language and in one of the most fetching melodies he’s ever conjured. In “I Am A Scientist”, Pollard explains the album that you just heard and he explains all that you’re going to hear from him in the future. Why does Pollard never stop? Why is 4-5 albums a year normal for him, even in his 60s? He tells you in this song. Seriously. It’s right here.
2. “Tractor Rape Chain” (Guided by Voices, Bee Thousand, 1994)
As moving as “I Am a Scientist” is, “Tractor Rape Chain” is even better. It’s the most beautiful Bee Thousand song. It’s a jewel hidden under a strange title, but things like that are part of the charm of Guided by Voices. It’s one of those songs that feels like the writer was blessed with it rather than actually wrote it. It’s too much perfection.
Thanks to Pollard releasing so much of his archives though, we do have some insight into its creation. Parts of “Tractor Rape Chain” laid around on basement tapes going back a decade. The verses are repurposed from a half-decent stab at power pop called “Tell Me” that dates back to 1984 and the “speed up, slow down, go all around” part is from “Still Worth Nothing”, an outtake from 1988. The chorus comes from an otherwise completely different song titled “Tractor Rape Chain (Clean It Up)” from around 1991 or so.
I share these details because it’s more than geek trivia. The spirit of Pollard’s music is optimistic. Pollard knows all about never giving up and in the history of “Tractor Rape Chain” is a message to keep going. Keep writing. Keep making music. Keep making decorative refrigerator magnets. Keep doing whatever it is that you love to do. Don’t care if nobody else cares. Use your obscurity wisely. Stumble. Make wrong turns. Throw a knife at the apple and miss it by a mile sometimes. Because maybe, just maybe, in completely unrelated bits and pieces, you’re building a masterpiece, too. There are worse ways to spend ten years, at least.
1. “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” (Guided by Voices, Propeller, 1992)
I’m 46 and I think about death everyday. Pollard’s about twenty years older and his songs give me the impression that he thinks about it a lot, too. Every time he puts out a new album, it might drift across his mind that it could be his last, but there’s been only one time when he “knew” that it was his last. Propeller. 1992. Pollard was closing in on 35 years old and his band had gone nowhere for most of a decade, self-releasing records for no audience. His family had long wanted him to stop and he finally gave in. Before that though, one last heist.
Sometimes when I listen to Propeller I imagine that it really was the last album. I’m glad that it’s not, but I do like to appreciate it from time to time as the final statement that it was intended to be. A closing blaze of glory. An electrifying conclusion. A small press (500 copies in its original run) vinyl artifact in handmade sleeves for the crate-diggers who might find it in a year or five years or fifty years.
The nearly six-minute “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” is the perfect way to kick it off.
“Special elixirs flow and then the onion lady blows”? What does that mean? And what the hell is a “Mesh Gear Fox”? The answer: Who cares? It sounds good. That’s all that matters right now.
“Time’s wasting now and you’re not gonna live forever”? I know what that means and once you hear that line you know what this whole song means. You know what Pollard’s whole career means.
This is the greatest Pollard song because it’s his most powerful expression of the indomitable spirit. His music-making days were over (or so he thought) and there’s an undercurrent of melancholy, but above all else this song is a celebration. It’s a party for what’s still here and it’s a party for what will soon be gone. It’s a kind of happy funeral. It finds the victory in this moment, which is Pollard’s signature move.
That’s what keeps many of us attached to Pollard’s music, listening to every new album and giving their furious ideas time to unfold. It’s about more than “solid hooks” and “catchy melodies”. It’s the love for life that’s in everything that he makes. You grow old with this music. You explore and re-explore. You hear new things with time.
What “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” means to me in 2023 is that it’s a near-death experience. Pollard thought that his band was done, but no. Propeller reached a few influential ears that helped to buy GBV another life and Pollard’s been on a rampage ever since, right up to today.
It also sounds like the earth-shaker song that early GBV was working toward over their five previous records, as well as something that Pollard didn’t try to compete with for years. GBV’s sound after this was defined by short, lo-fi blasts. It would take Pollard awhile to start putting together multi-leveled suites like this again. Now he does it often.
“Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” stands out still, though. It’s a song that gives me more than I would ever ask from any rock band. It’s a map and a model for how to smile and celebrate when it comes time for the end.
you are a brilliant writer!! this should be a book, for real.
you really capture what it means to love this band – words can be hard (for me) when trying to express such esoteric feelings but you do it so well – thanks for this
Thanks for the comment. Pollard’s music is a rich subject. I love to write about it.
so glad to see red cross Vegas nights was included… and you reminded me of wish you were young… but missing low flying perfection? or heavy metal country… teardrop paintballs… night of the Golden underground… paper girl….
I know I know.. you can’t include then all… but those are definitely top 100 for me.
amazing piece though!
100 songs is a perfect number for a list, but it’s a small number when it comes to listing great Robert Pollard songs. That’s okay, though. Because lists should be a challenge.
Dear Jason,
What a great read this is. I choked up a couple of times because I can really relate to a lot of things you said about some songs. I’m turning 48 this year and walked about the same Pollardpath as you did. I met the band when Alien Lanes came out in a small town called Nijmegen in Holland. A treasured moment, especially because Bob rarely plays in Europe or anywhere overseas. Anyway, thank you Jason! I will come back to this piece more often and listen to the songs at the same time to hit me in the feelings.
Fabulous Jason! So many surprising entries. I’m off to check those I don’t know.
Oh man! I’d love a playlist of these.
Jason, thank you for this thoughtful and expertly written list.
I’m 45; Robert Pollard is my hero and the greatest songwriter who ever lived.
Jason, this was brilliant. I love so much GBV and Pollard stuff, but it’s invaluable to have a guide like this to dig further. I’m a huge fan of your Robert Pollard Mania series too. Thanks for this. (You should definitely do a book of some type!)
A wonderful read, hats off Jason.
truly remarkable front to back. I know there’s the Greer band book and the Pollard biography, but with this site you are the one writing the book on Bob.
I lost count of how many albums this made me want to break out and revisit , but special appreciation for all the Honey Locust Honky Tonk love- always thought that never got it’s proper due as a solo masterpiece right up there with Kid Marine and Compound Eye.