Robert Pollard
“Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft b/w “Dolphins of Color (Live)”
2006. The Fading Captain Series
“Love is stronger than witchcraft” is a line from the 1942 movie I Married a Witch. You can find it toward the end at the climax, spoken by Veronica Lake.
That’s not just trivia to me. I like to know things like that. It makes the song even better, in my view.
I like the idea that the whole world is talking to us, whether it’s the dirt on the ground or the sky above and everything that we notice in between, and all of this stuff that we see and hear each day is saying that it wants to be a song.
The artist snatches an overheard moment out of the great sideshow and now owns it to use for his or her own purposes.
Where do they go from there? Anywhere.
Robert Pollard’s song is not about Veronica Lake. At least I don’t think that it is. My take is that it’s about how love is the only way. Most of us will never be perfect according to the ancient rules of religion, but we’ll always be on the right path as long as we follow love. Anything that removes us from that is so much witchcraft.
That’s a hippie sentiment and the beautiful chiming guitar hook saves it from being corny. Then Pollard and Todd Tobias shoot us up into the cosmos with great prog-rock drama in a little over four minutes. Meanwhile, Pollard is almost a gospel singer as he shouts the title over and over again, his melodic genius guiding him through each repetition so that it never drones. He sings the hell out of it.
It’s hard to believe that I didn’t like “Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft” when it came out, but then as a fan nerd I do tend to dismiss Robert Pollard’s singles. I expect the really great stuff to be hidden on the album. That’s usually true. My favorite moment on From a Compound Eye is “Conqueror of the Moon”. It’s a GREAT song, but probably not a great single.
“Love is Stronger Than Witchcraft” IS a great single, though, even if it took me a few decades of untangling wires in my head to figure that out.
The 7″ B-side is a killer. It will assassinate you. You will be dead after you hear it. It’s that good.
Up until 2006, the only Circus Devils song that got played live was the punk-rockin’ “Bull Spears” (from The Harold Pig Memorial). If you saw Guided by Voices in 2003 or 2004, you probably heard them blast through it.
When Pollard got a new band together in 2006, he slipped “Dolphins of Color” (from Five) into sets that were heavy on his new solo double album and it fit right in. The last thing that you could call bandmate Tommy Keene is a prog-rocker, but he’s old enough to remember the 1970s and he applies all of that knowledge to his moody keyboard part for this bizarre, grizzled, crazy song.
In early 2006, YouTube wasn’t a thing yet and neither were good cellphone video cameras. What did Pollard’s new touring band sound like? You had to go see them to find out. Recordings circulated, but I don’t remember ever getting into that, probably because my internet connection sucked and it would have taken me nine years to download. I didn’t discover cable internet until late 2006.
Also, Pollard’s new sparse touring schedule meant that he skipped Dallas. He played Austin, but in 2006 I figured out the perfect way to fuck up my life so that I couldn’t get there. I held out for a Dallas date that never happened (and when it finally did happen, in 2008, it got cancelled).
So this B-side was my first taste of the new band (Robert Pollard, Tommy Keene, Dave Phillips, Jason Narduccy, Jon Wurster) and I ate it up like free pizza. It was woozy and cozy and something new. Guided by Voices never had a keyboard on stage, but this band did.
Not even witchcraft could keep me away.