Robert Pollard
“Current Desperation (Angels Speak of Nothing)” b/w “Met Her at a Seance”
2007, Happy Jack Rock Records
Why does Robert Pollard write fucked up songs like “Spider Eyes” when he can write gorgeous things such as “Current Desperation (Angels Speak of Nothing)”?
I don’t ever ask that question, but I know that some do. I’ve read the reviews. I’ve seen the internet posts. There’s an audience who loves Pollard’s pop melodies, but they have a hard time reckoning with how he’s a complete nut at the same time.
The doorways into this vast body of work are many, as are the paths that the listener can take through it. Smack me if I ever start saying that I know the right way. I don’t. No one ever will.
I guess I can’t blame the fan who considers Pollard a pop genius who has a weakness for indulgence. He’s got a ridiculous stack of (should-be) hits. Listen to the seductive beauty of “Current Desperation (Angels Speak of Nothing)” and I can see how the person drawn to that flame might not also have ears for Pollard’s interest in dirges, his prog influences, and Circus Devils.
Me, I’m the opposite. In my vision, Robert Pollard is a freaky weirdo who happens to be a pop genius.
I once read about how Roky Erickson, of the 13th Floor Elevators, lived in his later years in a home full of many blaring TVs and radios, turned on at all hours, calming the voices in his damaged brain. Robert Pollard’s songs remind me of that. They’re the result of a fuzzy, nonsense conversation between pop, prog, psychedelia, and punk, endless records and endless rock mythology and mystery, that buzzes perpetually in Pollard’s head and it’s through this prism that Pollard tells us about his life right up to today.
To me, Robert Pollard is a pure American eccentric, an artist with a noisy and sometimes difficult vision, who, when he’s in the mood, can also slay you with the best hook you’ve heard all week.
That genius splashes and drips from every curve and surface of “Current Desperation (Angels Speak of Nothing)”. It achieves catharsis in just over two minutes and with Pollard’s signature eccentric structure. As with so many of his songs, it’s a pop hit from another dimension. A better one, maybe.
This taster from the upcoming Coast to Coast Carpet of Love LP is the first great song from Pollard’s Happy Jack Rock Records Singles Series and it’s a reminder of why Todd Tobias, who arranges and performs the music here, is such a valuable collaborator.
Tobias is a powerful one-man-band who can crash the car into the wall or give you a pretty bed of flowers, whatever is needed, but he’s also not going to clash with Pollard’s own craziness. The creator of the music on an album like Five isn’t going to be uncomfortable when Pollard decides that a song doesn’t need a chorus. He’s going to go with the madness.
The B-side is an outtake from an LP that Pollard changed his mind about. He and Tobias finished an album and then Pollard had second thoughts. He stripped it of all of its commercial potential and what was left was the smokier and more mystifying (and gorgeous) Silverfish Trivia. “Met Her at a Seance” is a nice little groover that, unlike the previous two B-sides in the series, doesn’t upstage the A-side for rock or weirdness.
The Happy Jack Rock Records singles series was mailorder-only at the time and if you got this 7″ when it came out in August of 2007 and you also happened to go to your local record store that same week, you might have noticed Robert Pollard and Todd Tobias’s most rocking and weirdest (and best) album of the year sitting quietly in the CD bins and ready to rip your face off.
The double vinyl took a few more months to materialize, but the CD, put out by Mike Patton’s Ipecac Records, was there and beckoning.
It’s a behemoth called Sgt. Disco and we’re going to talk about it next.