Robert Pollard
From a Compound Eye
2006, Merge Records
I used to think that the kick of a double album was that it simply meant more music to enjoy, but no, that’s not it.
The secret of the best ones is that they’re all uniquely haunted.
Blonde on Blonde, The White Album, Exile on Main St., From a Compound Eye.
None of those were just another day at the office. Some unusual force made an epic absolutely necessary.
Bob Dylan was frustrated. Long sessions in New York yielded only one track that he deemed worthy. Eventually he got convinced to start over with a new group of players in Nashville, where everything came together in a series of white-hot all-night recording marathons. When it was time to go, he had a pile of gold, including one essential cut that was long enough to fill a whole LP side. There was no way that Blonde on Blonde could be a regular record. We needed to know what went down in Nashville and Dylan needed to take us on a journey.
The Beatles got back from India and were splintering apart. Each songwriter was on his own trip and the others were his backing band. The White Album is a batch of solo records crammed together. The songs are supposed to clash. Maybe only a fragmented group would or could make something like it and no mere single LP could paint the picture of how much this band, and their relationship with each other, had changed.
The Rolling Stones made dirty rock ‘n’ roll in what was probably a beautiful villa in the south of France. They were fleeing England’s tax laws and also brought along their producer, some recording equipment, a bunch of friends, and a mountain of drugs. Their music is a poisonous flower grown from decadence. The double length of Exile on Main St. gives you space to imagine that you’ve dropped in on the party, as well as appreciate how the Jagger-Richards craft manages to shine through.
Robert Pollard was a man starting a new era in his life and art. While Half Smiles of the Decomposed is the “final” Guided by Voices album, From a Compound Eye is the secret other half of the story. It was completed in mid-2004, before GBV even started their farewell tour, and if you turn it up loud enough you can all but hear Pollard’s will to upend everything snap into place over twenty-six songs. It’s a double-record set because Eye needs to be many different things at once: a new beginning, a climax, a summary, and an argument to his audience, and maybe even to himself, that this is the right move.
It’s Pollard’s best record of 2006, a contender for his most essential solo release, an explosion of many of his songwriting preoccupations, and is one of the top albums in the stack for a long walk or some serious headphone time laying back with your eyes closed. Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #103: FROM A COMPOUND EYE”