Robert Pollard
“Rud Fins” b/w “Piss Along You Bird”
2007, Happy Jack Rock Records
The year is 2007 and if you’re of Generation X vintage (or older), the music industry is mutating into something different from what you knew before.
Record stores are dying off. The venerable Tower Records chain closed late last year in 2006, which is a big deal. It’s normal for people around you to say that they don’t pay for music anymore. Some of them are outright hostile to the idea.
If you still enjoy buying and owning records, somebody in a warm home near you thinks that you’re an idiot. You’re too dumb to know that you can get music for free now. Either that or you’re some backwards ass who lives in denial of the revolutionary new way.
At this same time, the vinyl comeback quietly percolates. You can’t buy it from Target or Amazon yet. Secondhand prices are still reasonable. Most record stores that are holding up remain dominated by CDs, but the occasional news article comes out about how LP sales are ticking upward while CD sales are ticking downward. It’s also suddenly common for new LPs to come packaged with a slip of paper with a code for a digital download, which solves that old problem of “I want to buy vinyl, but I hate that I can’t play it in my car”.
(The first album that I can remember that addressed this issue was Shellac’s 1000 Hurts in 2000 on Touch & Go. The vinyl floated a CD copy in the sleeve like it was no big deal, like it was a cheap giveaway in a cereal box. This was a major topic of discussion at the time.)
It was 2007 when a younger co-worker labeled me a “hipster” because I was into collecting records (and had been for about ten years). We were generally friendly and I don’t remember what my retort was to this twerp, who liked some cool music and proudly pirated everything, but it was one of those little moments that showed me that I’d gone out of sync.
Many adventurous young listeners not only weren’t buying music, but they actively considered it lame to do so.
Matador Records experimented a lot with how to sell records during this rough spell. They piled on gimmicks and stunts. I was a casual enjoyer of The New Pornographers in 2007 and I remember NOT buying their new album, Challengers, because Matador went so nuts for that one that I found it confusing. There were multiple tiers to purchasing it, some with offerings that would only be fulfilled months later. If you just went into a record store and bought the LP like normal, it felt like you were getting something less than if you invested in Matador’s sideshow.
They tried to pull that shit with Robert Pollard, but he wasn’t having it. It was why he left them for Merge Records. In an interview for a defunct music website called Harp Magazine, he tells the story:
“Harp: Why didn’t you go with Matador since that was GBV’s label?
Pollard: [sighs] You know, I expressed the desire to put out two records a year and they said I could. But they came out with this plan where one album would be a proper album and then the other would be kind of a fan club thing where I would provide them with like a song every two weeks. There would be this kind of elite club, with a name something like Holiday Camp. And I was into the idea at first and thought it was good. I would provide them over the course of four or five months however many songs, and then at the end the people involved in the club could actually sequence [the tracks] and choose the album cover, all of that. I thought, ‘I don’t need other people to be involved in the creative process of what I do, to let people have that much control.’ And I said I didn’t want to do that, and while a couple of people at Matador said I didn’t have to do that, a couple of people said that is what I have to do, so I just said, ‘Okay, let’s shake hands and say goodbye.’ I still have friends at Matador. But I’m at the point in my life when I don’t need to be jumping through fucking hoops anymore. And I also felt a little like a guinea pig, because I figure I was the only one [on Matador] prolific enough to do something like that! ‘Let Interpol try that, let them do that one.’
I just want to make records and put them out.”
I’m glad that Pollard didn’t accept that. It’s an awful idea for a guy like him. I want him to surprise me and confuse me. I have no desire to intrude on the process.
Still, maybe it stuck with him that this was a time when you needed to do something special to promote a new album release, some kind of stunt, some kind of thing that gets people talking.
He went with an idea that wouldn’t make a 49-year-old artist and record collector’s skin crawl.
A 7″ singles series. Makes sense to me.
Pollard had TWO new solo albums coming out on Merge Records in October. Starting in June, he would put out a new 7″ single each month for a year. The presentation would be simple. No artwork, just the old-fashioned plain white sleeves of records meant to be played rather than gawked at. The A-sides would be from one of the two albums. The B-sides would be (mostly) exclusive outtakes and nuggets. The label was Happy Jack Rock Records, Pollard’s THIRD new self-run imprint of the year.
The first A-side was “Rud Fins” and I think it’s a song about persistence, as told in Pollard’s crazy brain language (“I came crashing out/ By the third world change/ With Sin Admiral Stikit/ And I could not die”). The title is never mentioned in the lyrics, but my own crazy brain wonders if it’s a reference to Neil Finn from Split Enz and Crowded House. “Rud Fins” goes for a clean pop songwriter sound. The genius emerges with his latest hook.
Todd Tobias, newly entrusted with supplying the entire arrangement and instrumental work on his own for a Pollard solo record, sparkles and rocks in all of the right places. This song is two weirdos trying to look normal for about two-and-a-half minutes.
Now, to be perfectly honest, I was underwhelmed by “Rud Fins” at first spin. It wasn’t bad and I like it a lot now, but its chorus-less surge didn’t immediately punch me in the face. Still, I was undeterred for three reasons:
1) Pollard’s singles pretty much always sound better on the album (and “Rud Fins” does shine hardest sequenced toward the end of side 1 of Coast to Coast Carpet of Love).
2) I knew that Pollard doesn’t like to front-load things. I would get punched in the face eventually.
3) The B-side is a monster. “Piss Along You Bird” is a zippy racecar of a song and if this is an outtake, the two new albums must be killers.
“Piss Along You Bird” is a song so nice that Pollard released it twice (it also shows up on Suitcase 3 two years later). It’s a leftover from the rough draft that eventually became Silverfish Trivia. It’s a casualty from when Pollard decided that his first solo record statement of 2007 needed to be strange and foggy rather than rocking and punchy.
Summer of 2007 was a good one, I think. I’m still alive so it must have been okay. I remember living for records and not even owning a TV. This might have been the year that I developed rashes on my hands from so much thrift store and used bookstore crate-digging (I eventually brought sanitizer wipes with me on my record hunts and that solved the problem).
My brain was cooked in used bin gems. I think I found Duncan Browne this year and the early stuff from Tyrannosaurus Rex (later T. Rex) and 2007 might have been when the brilliance of Bobbie Gentry hit me.
At the same time, I heard Blood Visions by Jay Reatard and it opened up a vast world of underground, vinyl-fixated, noisy, crazed punk that hooked me for years.
The greatness of Robert Pollard is that he always fit into both categories for me. Every song he writes comes from a deep well of a life lived and many records spun, so many traditions embraced and rejected. But he’s also crazy and never been beholden to the old verse-chorus-verse stuff.
I felt crazy in 2007 and I guess that I was. But Robert Pollard was crazy right next to me. And this is how relationships form.