Tag: tobin sprout

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The 100 Best Robert Pollard Songs, Ranked

As of this writing, Robert Pollard has somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 albums out, plus another tall stack of EPs, singles, and box sets. The first Guided by Voices record came out in 1986 and he’s refused to shut up ever since. This scares off some people while others have the time of their lives geeking out over it all.

I’m one of the geeks. I love it. I mean, aren’t most great rock icons crazy? Or at least appear to be? Little Richard was crazy. David Bowie was crazy. Glitter and punk and rockabilly were whole genres of bands aggressively looking crazy. Looking crazy, like you don’t follow the normal rules, is what makes a band cool. Looking crazy is a test for the listener. Not everyone gets it, but those who do will cling to it.

Ex-college jock, ex-schoolteacher, current rock ‘n’ roll cult hero Robert Pollard (born on October 31, 1957) doesn’t seem too crazy if you look at him, but take the long, strange journey into his records and that’s when you see it.

Yeah, he’s crazy. He’s as crazy as any of ’em.

The sensible way to make a list of 100 songs from this Sargasso Sea of music would be to apply a filter to it. Stick to his flagship project Guided by Voices maybe. That would be smart. Or make separate lists for different eras of Pollard’s work. That would be smart, too.

I’m not smart, though. I had to do things the hard way.

I had to be the guy who tries to jump his Kawasaki motorcycle over a few too many cars and then needs to be rushed to the hospital.

This list has one rule: Robert Pollard must have a songwriting credit. That’s it. Songs from Guided by Voices, his solo albums, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and assorted other projects are all welcome. There’s even one song here that Pollard wrote yet doesn’t sing or perform on the record.

This also means that the work of other songwriters aren’t here. If I made a dedicated Guided by Voices list, some choice Tobin Sprout moments would sit in the ranks for sure (“Dodging Invisible Rays”, “To Remake the Young Flyer”, “Waves”), as would Doug Gillard’s “I Am a Tree”.

I made this decision because the Guided by Voices of 1986 and of 2023 have only one thing in common: Robert Pollard. The story of Guided by Voices is fractured because there is no definitive lineup. Pollard’s songs are the one thing that connect the various eras, so that’s where I direct my surgical focus and his songs are found in many different places.

The BIG problem with a list like this though is that there are many more than 100 great Pollard songs. In ten minutes I will change my mind about nearly everything here.

In the spirit of Pollard’s music though, there are times when it’s best to blurt out whatever you’ve got and then move on. Sometimes good things are about the moment and perfection isn’t so important. Moments can mean a lot and lists are one of those things that will never be perfect.

So, this is my list, as of this moment at 10:58 AM on May 24, 2023.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #68: LIFE STARTS HERE

Airport 5
Life Starts Here
2002, The Fading Captain Series

My guess is that many deep-digging fans of Robert Pollard are White Album people.

It’s the old, dead-horse debate. Did The Beatles’ White Album need to be a 30-track double-LP? Do its detours and excesses hold up? Was it really necessary that we hear “Revolution 9” and “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?” and “Wild Honey Pie”?

My answer to those questions is YES, YES, and YES. That’s my favorite Beatles album. It’s crazy and lively and packed with ideas and I would sooner chop off one of my fingers than lose any of it. The frosty clip collage “Revolution 9” is cool as shit. It makes the closing lullaby “Good Night” creepy.  On The White Album, the most famous rock band in the world deconstruct their sound in a fast-paced flurry of genres and the only way to end it is on an apocalyptic note. It’s as good as it gets.

Some disagree. Some would prefer a smoother, more conventional ride. They’ve got a whole list of Lennon-McCartney and Harrison songs that they wish they’d never heard. I think that these people are goofy, but, hey, it’s a big world. There’s room for all kinds.

What I’m trying to say is that Robert Pollard’s music has some of the same appeal and leads to similar division.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #63: TOWER IN THE FOUNTAIN OF SPARKS

Airport 5
Tower in the Fountain of Sparks
2001, The Fading Captain Series

Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout made three albums together as a duo and each one is its own odd creature that just barely gets along with the others.

Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the first one. Sprout created the instrumental tracks and then Pollard came up with songs to go on top and they called it Guided by Voices because why not? It was 1996 and Tonics sounded like the mutant brother of Alien Lanes. Lo-fi. Fucked up. Weird all over, but in a familiar way. Pollard’s voice and Sprout’s guitar were sounds we’d heard work together many times before.

Five years later, after Sprout had long left the band to raise his new baby and make beautiful solo records that expanded his range into perfect piano pop and organ-heavy psychedelic bubblegum (I’ve raved here about his first one, Carnival Boy, and it’s not even the best one) he and Pollard got together again for another album, made the same way as before.

Sprout’s music, Pollard’s songs and words. That’s it, except this time they called it Airport 5.

Also, they didn’t sound much like Guided by Voices anymore–at least not in the way that many expected.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #60: STIFLED MAN CASINO

Airport 5
“Stifled Man Casino”
2001, The Fading Captain Series

Tobin Sprout brings the snap-crackle and Robert Pollard brings the pop for this second single from their Airport 5 project. “Total Exposure” is the quiet one and “Stifled Man Casino” is the loud one.

It’s the anthem. It’s the mic-swinger. On the surface, it could pass for power pop circa 1981 from a band of young new wavers in jeans and T-shirts. Maybe one guy in the group rocks the loose skinny tie look. Didn’t Airport 5 open for The Pretenders a few times way back when?

“Stifled Man Casino” kicks like that sorta thing. It’s surging and youthful–and then you tune in to the lyrics and you hear the truth.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #59: TOTAL EXPOSURE

Airport 5
“Total Exposure”
2001, The Fading Captain Series

Isolation Drills hadn’t yet cooled off in the new release racks back in the spring of 2001 when Robert Pollard was already promoting more records coming out over the next few months on his Fading Captain Series label.

The one that had us all buzzing was Airport 5, a new collaboration with Tobin Sprout.

Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout together again! OH MY GOD! Indie dorks like me fainted at the very thought.

The resulting album is a lovely piece of work, if not quite the tonic that some expected, but we’ll have plenty of time to talk about that later (the album will be #63 in this series). Preceding it were two 7″ singles of preview tracks (with non-album B-sides, of course) and the first one was a song that I like to call “Total Exposure”.

Because that’s what it’s called.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #50: DAYTON, OHIO-19 SOMETHING AND 5

Guided by Voices
Dayton, Ohio-19 Something and 5
2000, The Fading Captain Series

On paper, this modest 7″ is one weird little insect of a record.

Then you listen to it and it’s still weird. And murky. And sad. The previous Fading Captain Series release, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, was warm and celebratory (for the most part) while this one is cold and defeated. The flowers are dead. The trees are bare. There’s no sun in the gray sky. Even good memories hurt.

This is a uniquely personal item in Pollard’s body of work. He’s written many personal songs, but this is a rare record devoted entirely to handing you a bucket full of fresh blood.

The quick description: The A-side is a recent live recording of a sleeper GBV gem; on the B-side are three songs that Pollard recorded all by his lonesome with only a guitar and a 4-track.

There’s something going on here, though. This record makes a statement. There’s meat on the bone.

Let’s break it down.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #39: I AM A TREE

Guided by Voices
I Am a Tree
1997, Matador Records

Robert Pollard writes tons of anthems on his own so it was a major endorsement of GBV’s new lead guitarist Doug Gillard when Pollard not only recorded Gillard’s “I Am a Tree” for Guided by Voices, but also consented to it as the second and final single from Mag Earwhig!. Until Tobin Sprout scored a few A-sides about fifteen years later when the old line-up reunited, “I Am a Tree” was the only GBV single not written by King Shit himself.

Pollard still sings it like it’s his own, though. He thinks it’s a great song. You can tell. Meanwhile, Cobra Verde summon thunder and the song itself is powerful and yet unpretentious. It’s total pop with Godzilla guitars. In 1975, it might have been a hit. In 1997, it was the sound of a band known for lo-fi brevity taking its boldest step yet in shedding its old skin.

“I Am a Tree” is almost five minutes long and recorded to fill a stadium.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #38: MAG EARWHIG!

Guided by Voices
Mag Earwhig!
1997, Matador Records

For indie rocker kids, there was an uncomfortable truth about Guided by Voices and in 1997 they finally had to face it.

Robert Pollard likes and is very much influenced by prog-rock.

And not in a “math rock” way, which was cool back then. Bands who were into crazy time signatures and got compared to King Crimson and their LP was out on Touch & Go. That was okay.

Pollard probably digs that stuff, too, but he’s more into Peter Gabriel’s Genesis. He likes concept albums and all of that mystical, pastoral British junk. Fantasy imagery and songs that might kick in with the good part after about four minutes of build-up because kids in 1973 (a year when Pollard turned 16) had the attention span for that. Or at least they were stoned enough to go with it.

Yep, the guy known for recording songs that barely last a minute in his basement was influenced by the most long-winded and indulgent rock genre around.

Artists. They’re complicated.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #32: TONICS & TWISTED CHASERS

A rare CD photo in this series

Guided by Voices
Tonics & Twisted Chasers
1996, Rockathon Records

In 1996, we thought that two albums, two EPs and a couple of singles from Robert Pollard in one year was a lot.

We were so innocent back then.

It was a year in which Guided by Voices ran Matador through their paces and released so many records that it became an issue for some people. The “Bob Pollard needs an editor” cliche started up around this time. Critics were running out of things to say about the band and ho-hum’d their way through reviews. I still remember a guy in my dorm in ’96 who said “I liked Guided by Voices for awhile and then Pollard got musical diarrhea”.

And it was in this climate that GBV put out ONE MORE FUCKING ALBUM at the tail end of the year.

The way I remember it, it was a surprise release. No ramp-up. It just showed up one day for sale on their website, announced first through their e-mail list. Mailorder only. Vinyl only. 1,000 copies in a variety of colors. Nothing that would compete for rack space with their other releases (and, thus, not annoy the Matador folks). The artwork was a crude black-and-white photocopy of the Sunfish Holy Breakfast cover photo pasted onto a plain white sleeve. The band put it out themselves just like the old days. The aesthetic was the pseudo-“bootleg” style that they used for live albums such as For All Good Kids, but this time it was an LP of nineteen new songs.

As for the music, Tonics & Twisted Chasers is the sweetly weird work of savages who never sleep. It’s a pile of lo-fi nutcase stuff that stands apart from the year’s other LPs.

It plays like Under the Bushes Under the Stars was a dream that never really happened.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #30: SUNFISH HOLY BREAKFAST

Guided by Voices
Sunfish Holy Breakfast
1996, Matador Records

In 1996, Matador Records indulged Robert Pollard’s madcap work ethic. Yes, they passed on the weird solo acoustic EP that he offered them (which Pollard then merely stuck to the end of his Not in My Airforce album), but they went along with plenty of other madness, bless ’em.

When Pollard pulled the plug on GBV’s The Flying Party is Here LP at the last minute, just as it was being prepared to go to press, in favor of a new set of songs that he preferred (and which turned out to be Under the Bushes Under the Stars), Matador were cool with it.

Six months after the new GBV album, they put out Pollard’s first solo album.

Two months after that, in November, they also released a pair of Guided by Voices EPs on the same day. They were two oddballs that didn’t do much for the “Pollard needs an editor” crowd, but if you’d been bitten by the bug, they were sweet stuff full of those warm and familiar basement vibes.

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