The Takeovers
Bad Football
2007, Off Records
Young listeners and new listeners to Robert Pollard’s work tend to be awed by the big pile of it, as they should be.
I used to think like that, but then I got old and Pollard’s songs have been a daily presence in my life for over thirty years and there’s a new color to my feelings about it all.
Over time, Pollard has become more and more relatable to me. He’s not from planet Krypton. He’s a guy who shows up and does the work. Just like I’ve been doing forever. You, too, I bet.
Five albums a year isn’t so crazy if you think of all of the shit that YOU do each day, all that you tolerate and work against just to finish what needs to get done so you can get paid, take care of the kids, contribute a little something to the big merry-go-round, and be a proper member of the human race.
I’m not saying that every musician should do it this way. I like My Bloody Valentine, Kim Deal, and Fiona Apple. Some brilliant people thrive on a deliberate approach. They have no taste for banging it out. If it takes a decade to feel out where the sounds in their head should go next, they’re willing. Each release is painfully realized, an exhaustion of a vision that leaves nothing left afterward, to the point that you might not hear from them again until the next Halley’s Comet. That path is risky in its own fashion and I have nothing bad to say about it.
But Pollard’s working artist thing, an almost blue collar cycle of turning out work and staying in the zone, no time to waste, speaks to me like nothing else. I’m hooked, I’m damaged, and I relate in my own crazy way.
The first song on Bad Football tackles this.
“You’re at it/ Out there in your holy dome/ On blackboard Monday”.
The “holy dome” is your own head and “You’re At It” is a song about getting up and doing the same thing that you’ve done a million times. Doesn’t matter what it is. Maybe it’s a job. Maybe it’s a bad habit. Maybe you’re making art. Maybe there’s nothing on your schedule except reckoning with another day of your own body and brain and how you feel about the sunlight. Maybe it’s a thing that you do reluctantly. Maybe it’s a thing that you do compulsively. You’re at it. Again. At it. Again.
On one level, Pollard teases his own work ethic in this song, but I think he also asks you to see yourself in it (“Look at you/ You’re at it“). You get up and do what you must so that you reach the other side of the day with something that keeps you going. What’s more universal and human than that?
You can burn out on anything though and “You’re At It” looks over the cold precipice and into the darkness because that’s what rock ‘n’ roll does (“This form of suicide’s not quick enough/ What else you got?“), but it also understands that this is life. This is normal. It’s not a bad thing. This is how it goes.
It’s good use made of Chris Slusarenko’s music, which is Swagger City. The drums may as well be gunshots and the bass is thick and more rude than someone who talks in a movie theater. A moody guitar solo guest spot from Stephen Malkmus completes the picture. This music burns the barn to the ground and Pollard steps up with a disarming portrait of the human condition.
Bad Football came out barely six weeks after Silverfish Trivia. It needed to be something different and it is. This album is the grizzled rocker of the 2007 batch, but it also packs a crazy sense of humor. Chris Slusarenko writes, arranges, and performs the music, with the occasional cameo from an indie/underground luminary. The overall effect is a been-around-the-block punk playing with groovier sounds. It’s powerful rock with a weirdo soul.
For all of the big thoughts that I read into it, “You’re At It” has a loose, tossed-out spirit that runs wild in later tracks such as “Pretty Not Bad” and the bonkers face-stomper “Kicks at Gym”. Both rock in caveman style and both are tongue-in-cheek. In the former, Pollard sings “I was born out of weirdness and intricate science/ I got a fake English accent”. In the latter, he gives up on the song’s repetitive groove about halfway through, but makes it funny. It’s one of the best tracks on the LP, with drums by Dan Peters of Mudhoney and the quick guitar solo by Tad Doyle that lend it Sub-Pop grunge credibility.
There’s a throb to this record. Slusarenko and co-producer/engineer Brian Berg seem to know their Jack Douglas from their Eddie Kramer and have an ear for that 1970s sound that made classic rock records sound like a sack of anvils dropped on a hardwood floor. They don’t have the time or the budget of the classic stuff, but they get pretty darn close.
“Little Green Onion Man” is another one with a vivid, upfront bass sound that loosens the screws in your speakers. Pollard’s song feels silly at first and the music carries you away, but then you go over the lyrics and there’s something there to think about. Green onions, green slime, green money. a green nation. I think it’s a song about people who profit from shady means that are bad for everyone and they figured out how to get away with it, but Pollard sees how sleazy it is.
“Father’s Favorite Temperature” brings the same powerhouse punch, but the mood of Pollard’s song on top is different. It’s happy and nostalgic. How your dad feels about the weather and the temperature is important. I didn’t become a man after my first drink or my first relationship. I became a man when I finally had control of a thermostat.
Chris Slusarenko is one of the great Pollard collaborators because you can tell that he’s breathed in dust from all of the right old vinyl. He likes rock and weird stuff. He’s comfortable with the left turn and part of what drives him on a record like this is that he seems to be as big a fan of Pollard as me and wants to hear him cross paths with unexpected collaborators and sounds that are unusual for him.
For example, there’s very little piano in the vast Pollard stack, so Slusarenko creates a hyper-melodic piano-driven, near-showtune piece that becomes the great “Music for Us”. For this side 2 gem, Pollard finds his inner Tom Waits and sings to us about how nearly no music has universal power anymore. And it’s not the fault of the music. It’s people. Everyone’s in their own worlds.
“The Jester of Helpmeat” is in its own world. It’s a minute-long gag that feels like it got lost from somebody’s unfinished rock opera and it’s vital to this LP’s “anything can happen here” spirit.
The record’s two quietest moments are similarly beamed in from the Twilight Zone. The drumless and mostly acoustic (with subtle French horns) “Molly & Zack” is a stark cool-down wedged between two rockers. “The Year Nobody Died”, near the end, is even more sparse. Pollard’s songs on top felt like science-fiction scenarios to me for a long time. “Molly & Zack” still does, but “The Year Nobody Died”, such a sleep and foggy track, has emerged for me as a poignant piece about aging. Growing old means losing more and more people in your life all of the time. Every now and then though, you get a year where everyone you know and love survives. Nobody died. It’s pretty not bad.
Bad Football is a true sequel to Turn to Red. It calls back to it twice. Rich Turiel plays another spoken word role (in “Music for Us”) and Slusarenko gets to tastefully beef up another old outtake. How the lovely 1960s melody of “Smokestack Bellowing Stars” hasn’t appeared anywhere else I have no idea, but mysteries like that are part of Pollard’s appeal for some of us.
For more Bad Football pop, the big hits come later on side 2 because this album is weird like that.
“I Can See My Dog” feels very New Zealand breezy. Both Pollard and Slusarenko have plenty of Flying Nun on their shelves, I’m sure. Also, in a world divided, maybe talking about our pets is the great uniter.
Closing track “My Will” leaves us with a classic Pollard anthem. It’s a roaring fist-pumper never played live and never promoted much. “My Will” is Pollard’s last statement here about life and death and, appropriately, it’s also a joke that plays on the double meaning of the word “will”. It’s about will power AND the will that you leave behind after death.
Rock ‘n’ roll should be funny. At the very least, there should be a crazy smirk in there somewhere. I can’t think of a single name in music that I love who isn’t funny. I think that Leonard Cohen is funny. Hank Williams is funny. The Ramones are funny.
Robert Pollard is funny and Bad Football is a loud, noisy comedy of a record, but don’t think for a moment that this means that it’s lazy or meaningless. Everyone is showing up to work here. They’re on their game.
Chris Slusarenko’s music comes off as wild and spontaneous, but there’s so much sweat behind the curtain. I can hear it. I think he worked hard. Meanwhile, Pollard uses this music to go in any direction he pleases at the moment. Sometimes he has social commentary. Sometimes he just has a joke. Sometimes he just has a line or two that sound cool. But he always has a melody inside of him. He can’t get rid of it.
And we’re lucky that we get to hear it.
Death is serious, but life is funny. And there’s plenty of work to do in between.