Robert Pollard
Music for “Bubble”
2005, The Fading Captain Series
My idea of a great movie double-feature is two films that have little in common on the surface, but that talk to each other in an interesting way when seen together. The more far apart the movies are, the better. Different genres, different eras, different countries.
For an obvious example, when I lived in a college dorm circa 1997 or ’98, some of us got together and watched Taxi Driver and Manhattan back to back (and in that order) one night. They’re two very different movies with opposite visions of the same city set at around the same time. The main characters of each live on the same island, but not in the same world, and would hardly be able to function in the other’s world. Both films have a troubled male lead who has a very different relationship with a much younger girl. You can go deeper.
Robert Pollard’s two solo EPs of 2005 are a little like that. It’s all Robert Pollard music that reflects his psych-pop influences so they’re not night and day. They’re not Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But they are companions in my mind that twist and tease the same form, which (speaking of movies) is soundtrack records.
Zoom, from February, is a fake movie soundtrack. The song titles reference characters. The sleeve art resembles a movie poster. Even the name of the record is a cinematic term. Project your own film in your mind. Mine is in black-and-white and is bafflingly arty, despite the record’s friendly melodies.
Meanwhile, September’s Music for “Bubble” is a real movie soundtrack, but you’d barely know it at a glance. Its artwork has nothing to do with the film. There are no stills from it on the sleeve. The layout of the 7″, at least, shows no signs of involvement from anyone connected to the movie. The back cover subtitles this affair as Music From the Steven Soderbergh Film, “Bubble”, but that’s it.
This is not a promo item put out by a movie studio. This is a Robert Pollard record released by his Fading Captain Series label. Its presentation says little more than “I have some songs that are in a movie. Here they are. I made my own art for it. Enjoy.”
And I do enjoy.
His collaboration with Todd Tobias is in full swing here. Together, they tell us everything that they know about Midwestern moods, air, shadows, and memories, but from the perspective of guys who’ve been around the block and know their rock.
With their From a Compound Eye double-LP still on ice over a year after it was completed and with no release date yet (though it’s coming soon), this EP is officially Pollard’s second solo record (after Fiction Man) with Tobias as his right hand. Pollard writes the songs, sings, and maintains a melodic guitar presence throughout while Tobias does everything else.
It hangs loose and is headed in no single direction. Its mood is “We’ve been recording all night and don’t know what time it is anymore”. Even when it rocks, it lunges to a 3 AM rhythm.
Opening track “All Men Are Freezing” is a gut-punch. The music is sleepy Who. Roger is worn out, Pete is tired, John is nearly passed-out, Keith has all but shut down. But in a good way. Weary muscles work together here for a beautiful anthem.
“Through all you’ve done, I will miss you anyway” goes the opening line and the song dwells in that place. If the closing track of Zoom nails the classic, uncomplicated Buddy Holly heartbreak song, this one gets more into the messy irrationality of love. It’s about missing things that you know were bad for you, things that maybe even made you miserable once. “I will miss you/ for no good reason”, Pollard adds to the first verse (his words are simple throughout), but there IS a reason and that’s loneliness. Or “all men are freezing”. It’s how a lonely person would look at happy people. We’re all getting beaten by the world’s snow and ice, but some find warmth in the cold.
“747 Ego” is that 3 AM rocker that I was talking about. It’s in the mean strut. I guess it’s about someone who has a big ego. My favorite part is the way that Pollard sings “So let the ragged flag unfurl”.
“Boring About” is an instrumental. It would later morph into the song “Boxing About” on Pollard’s Normal Happiness LP, but here it’s a pretty detour, as is “Search-Light Pickups”.
“I’m No Child” is my favorite. What are the lyrics? Couldn’t tell you (except for when Pollard lands on the title), but I love the way that it gropes for the light. Pollard belts it out like it’s a show-stopper. It’s not a polished performance, but it’s got heart and is his best vocal on the record for how much he lets go. How many ways can you sing the line “I’m no child”? Pollard finds all of the good ones within his range here.
The record closes with “747 Ego (Oh Yeah)” and it’s the exact same recording from earlier, except with tin-can backing vocals added. You know you wanted to hear it again.
Music for “Bubble” adds up to a record that you hang out with. Its six tracks charge forth and spin around like a conversation,
Ever since the Guided by Voices EP attack of 1993-94, when Pollard said yes to every label who approached him about putting out a 7″, his short-form releases have felt like secret emergency transmissions. They’re the sound of of what he’s thinking about and working on RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE. They’re news reports.
Pollard works well that way, when he’s spitting out songs and going for the quick sting.
Back to movies though, one of the most haunting moments on Alien Lanes is in the song “Ex-Supermodel”, when Pollard sings dismissively of a character who writes “music for soundtracks now” (“that’s what I wanted to do…. anyhow”, he adds with a tone of defeat), but ten years later he softened on the matter.
By that time, I think he knew more about how to navigate the treacherous terrain of the music business and keep his soul intact. For a guy who maintained multiple projects at once, film work could simply be another plate to spin, It wouldn’t become his whole artistic life. Part of the post-Guided by Voices landscape for Pollard was a wide open world of possibilities.
Also, Pollard commanded more respect as an artist in 2005 than he did as a new sensation in 1995. Steven Soderbergh approached him about making music for his film not because Pollard was a hot new name, but because Soderbergh is a fan. He used “Do Something Real” in his movie Full Frontal in 2002 and wrote the introduction to Jim Greer’s book Guided by Voices: A Brief History.
I love film history and part of it are the things that never happened. Movies are hard to get off the ground. Screenplays are written, productions are planned, and a whole lotta work goes into films that never get made. This is normal in that business.
One such example is the unmade movie, Cleo, a Steven Soderbergh project about Cleopatra, scripted by Jim Greer, and envisioned as a musical composed entirely of songs from Robert Pollard’s catalog. Catherine Zeta-Jones was attached to star. I think it’s an amazing idea with all sorts of room to be audacious and crazy. I want to see it.
But it never happened. The news articles that blew the trumpet about it are now almost twenty years old.
To a guy like Pollard, who works quickly, the movie business must seem ridiculous on some level.
But there’s reverence there, too. It’s the same reverence that I have for the movies, despite the giant hurdles that it puts in front of art. The great things that come out of it are miracles.
Zoom and Music for “Bubble” are two records grounded in both reverence and mockery. One fakes it, the other makes it yet doesn’t make a big deal about it. Together they form a statement that the movie business, seductive as it is, will never get in the way of Pollard’s art. He’s more driven than the narrator of “Ex-Supermodel”.
They’re what the kids today call a “power move” and they make a fine double-feature.