Tag: Todd Tobias

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #103: FROM A COMPOUND EYE

Robert Pollard
From a Compound Eye
2006, Merge Records

I used to think that the kick of a double album was that it simply meant more music to enjoy, but no, that’s not it.

The secret of the best ones is that they’re all uniquely haunted.

Blonde on Blonde, The White Album, Exile on Main St., From a Compound Eye.

None of those were just another day at the office. Some unusual force made an epic absolutely necessary.

Bob Dylan was frustrated. Long sessions in New York yielded only one track that he deemed worthy. Eventually he got convinced to start over with a new group of players in Nashville, where everything came together in a series of white-hot all-night recording marathons. When it was time to go, he had a pile of gold, including one essential cut that was long enough to fill a whole LP side. There was no way that Blonde on Blonde could be a regular record. We needed to know what went down in Nashville and Dylan needed to take us on a journey.

The Beatles got back from India and were splintering apart. Each songwriter was on his own trip and the others were his backing band. The White Album is a batch of solo records crammed together. The songs are supposed to clash. Maybe only a fragmented group would or could make something like it and no mere single LP could paint the picture of how much this band, and their relationship with each other, had changed.

The Rolling Stones made dirty rock ‘n’ roll in what was probably a beautiful villa in the south of France. They were fleeing England’s tax laws and also brought along their producer, some recording equipment, a bunch of friends, and a mountain of drugs. Their music is a poisonous flower grown from decadence. The double length of Exile on Main St. gives you space to imagine that you’ve dropped in on the party, as well as appreciate how the Jagger-Richards craft manages to shine through.

Robert Pollard was a man starting a new era in his life and art. While Half Smiles of the Decomposed is the “final” Guided by Voices album, From a Compound Eye is the secret other half of the story. It was completed in mid-2004, before GBV even started their farewell tour, and if you turn it up loud enough you can all but hear Pollard’s will to upend everything snap into place over twenty-six songs. It’s a double-record set because Eye needs to be many different things at once: a new beginning, a climax, a summary, and an argument to his audience, and maybe even to himself, that this is the right move.

It’s Pollard’s best record of 2006, a contender for his most essential solo release, an explosion of many of his songwriting preoccupations, and is one of the top albums in the stack for a long walk or some serious headphone time laying back with your eyes closed. Continue reading “Robert Pollard-Mania! #103: FROM A COMPOUND EYE”

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #102: I’M A STRONG LION

Robert Pollard
I’m a Strong Lion
2005, Must Destroy!!

“The label in the UK wanted to put out a single for From a Compound Eye and THAT was the song they picked. They wanted to put out a single that was one minute and five seconds long, And that’s why they were a GOOD LABEL! I agree with that!”

–Robert Pollard in Dallas, Texas, June 2018, as remembered by me, after Guided by Voices played “I’m a Strong Lion”

“I’m a Strong Lion”, the shortest track on an epic double album, is definitive Pollard.

The melody? Bubblegum-worthy. The tempo? In a rush! The lyrics? Straightforward for him, as well as personal and cutting. It’s like an Archies song except from an artist with something to get off his chest.

Here, he addresses his reputation, among some critics, as a tyrant who can’t keep a band together. His words offer no apologies. “Sure as I’m dyin’ here/ The problem is solved/ And it hurts to know/ You won’t be involved/ But I can beat you to the strong side/ Right away/ I’ll meet you today”. 

Pollard refuses to keep a band going that isn’t working out (or that he feels has run its course). Life is too short for that. He’s too old for that. Interpersonal drama within a band rarely makes the music better anyway. If you don’t like that, he doesn’t care. His lyrics might be directed toward an ex-bandmate or even to a fan who can’t hang with the latest change. Either interpretation fits.

The brief run-time is part of the statement. A little over one minute. That’s all the time that he’s going to spend talking about this. Pollard moves on and so does this song.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #97: MUSIC FOR “BUBBLE”

Robert Pollard
Music for “Bubble”
2005, The Fading Captain Series

My idea of a great movie double-feature is two films that have little in common on the surface, but that talk to each other in an interesting way when seen together. The more far apart the movies are, the better. Different genres, different eras, different countries.

For an obvious example, when I lived in a college dorm circa 1997 or ’98, some of us got together and watched Taxi Driver and Manhattan back to back (and in that order) one night. They’re two very different movies with opposite visions of the same city set at around the same time. The main characters of each live on the same island, but not in the same world, and would hardly be able to function in the other’s world. Both films have a troubled male lead who has a very different relationship with a much younger girl. You can go deeper.

Robert Pollard’s two solo EPs of 2005 are a little like that. It’s all Robert Pollard music that reflects his psych-pop influences so they’re not night and day. They’re not Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen. But they are companions in my mind that twist and tease the same form, which (speaking of movies) is soundtrack records.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #95: FIVE

Circus Devils
Five
2005, The Fading Captain Series

I listen to the fourth Circus Devils album, Five, only at night and never during the day.

Listening to Five with the sun in your face feels as wrong as watching Eraserhead at noon in your living room with the blinds open and the sound of kids playing outside.

Some things need darkness and nothing else going on around it. It’s about your attention and how it’s focused. Some things will never come alive for you if it’s not allowed to pummel your senses.

Speaking of Eraserhead, I saw it in a theater last May. I’d seen David Lynch’s 1978 landmark many times before, but this was my first big screen viewing. 35mm print. Beautiful analog image and sound. Respectful audience. Perfect mood. (Love ya, Texas Theatre.) What struck me most in that setting was how LOUD the movie is. The sound of Eraserhead–hums, hisses, squeaks, wind, industrial noises–hangs heavy in the room and envelops you. At moments, I found myself thinking more about the sounds I heard than what I saw on the screen.

There are many extraordinary things about Eraserhead and one is how much it builds its world on sound. Lynch is intense about that and it’s something that’s easy to lose outside of a darkened theater.

What I’m getting at is that when you listen to Five, I recommend shutting off the lights, Pick your favorite immersion method. Maybe it’s kicking back with headphones and your eyes closed or driving at night or going for a walk in the moonlight with a set of earbuds in your skull (all great ways to listen to music). Do whatever works for you to get into the cinema of this record. It’s my favorite Pollard release of 2005 and it deserves that.

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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! #89: FICTION MAN

Robert Pollard
Fiction Man
2004, The Fading Captain Series

April 24, 2004. Guided by Voices played The Bowery Ballroom in New York City.

Robert Pollard often gets chatty on stage and this night he spilled the news to the crowd that Guided by Voices were breaking up. It was the first public announcement. The people in that room got the scoop before any music journalist did.

One of the few bands out there that seemed incapable of ending without an act of God stopping them was closing up shop. It felt weird, but it made sense, too. Middle-aged people will understand.

Pollard went on to say that night that the final GBV album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, was coming out in August with a farewell tour to follow. The last show would happen on New Year’s Eve and he promised that the band would go out grandly. Everyone was getting along. Past GBV lineups went down in drama, but this one would get a happy ending.

(If you want to hear that announcement, you can. A recording of it came out on Meet the King: Asshole 2, one of Pollard’s later “comedy” LPs composed of excerpts of his stage banter. The track is called “Blaze of Fire” and it still plays as a heavy moment today.)

A little over two weeks later on May 10, 2004, Pollard’s next solo album, Fiction Man, came out. The break-up news overshadowed it, but Fiction Man was the secret beginning of the post-GBV era.

One of the charms of Fiction Man in retrospect is that no one knew this at the time, including, I suspect, the two men who made it. Every Pollard solo record back then was different. They had different moods and different collaborators. In ’04, Fiction Man was merely more of that.

It was a batch of new Pollard songs, but this time played, arranged, and recorded by multi-instrumentalist oddball and fellow Ohioan Todd Tobias.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #77: THE HAROLD PIG MEMORIAL

Circus Devils
The Harold Pig Memorial
2002, The Fading Captain Series

Night. Stars shine and shadows crawl over the fresh grave of Harold Pig. The other bikers who knew him gather and talk. Stories about dangerous days and deadly nights fill the air like exhaust fumes. Some of those stories might even be true.

Harold Pig is an abstract presence here, a collage of stitched-together skin and mismatched eyes and limbs belonging to Sonny Barger and Peter Fonda and the hairy Hell’s Angels goons at Altamont, as seen in the great Rolling Stones concert documentary Gimme Shelter. He’s the loser and outlaw that defines the classic vision of the freedom-loving icon on two wheels.

Some say that the world is better off without him, but Robert Pollard refuses to keep it that simple. He had an idea for a story about a dead biker. His wrote a batch of songs that circled around it and approached it from the weirdest angles. Like most good rock concept albums, The Harold Pig Memorial is flummoxing. It doesn’t have a plot, but it does have a mood.

Roll me a fat joint at 2 AM and give me a lighter and turn off everything except for the stereo and I might be able to connect some dots between tracks such as “Dirty World News” and “Exoskeleton Motorcade”, but I don’t have those things now.

I turned 45 last week (Pollard’s age when this album came out on Halloween, his birthday, in 2002) and all I have is this old body and some sparkling water and The Harold Pig Memorial sounds to me like an album about saying goodbye.

By your mid-40s, you’ve said goodbye to so many things.

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Robert Pollard-Mania! #64: RINGWORM INTERIORS

Circus Devils
Ringworm Interiors
2001, The Fading Captain Series

Sometimes on the internet, an innocent lamb who’s in the middle of discovering Robert Pollard’s body of work will step forward and ask where they should start with Circus Devils.

It’s a fair question. At fourteen albums released over sixteen years, this collaboration with fellow Ohioan oddballs Todd and Tim Tobias is not only Pollard’s longest-running side project, but it’s also the strangest. Their sound is a kind of psychedelic rock birthed from a mutant strain. It’s a creature that rose up out of toxic waste. Lots of slime, lots of teeth.

There are quiet Circus Devils records and loud ones and ones that sound like they were created by lizard men from Jupiter. Sometimes they sound like a rock band, sometimes they sound like mad scientists performing sinister experiments in a backyard tool shed. Their records are as varied as dreams, and often as haunting.

Their music comes in a few different flavors, but it all has a demon inside of it. There’s an eeriness in every sound that they make (Pollard got into the spirit and timed most of their albums for a Halloween release). It hides somewhere in even the project’s gentlest moments.

It’s a demon that runs naked and free and howling at the moon on their unhinged first record.

So, where to start with Circus Devils?

I say start at the BEGINNING. Start with Ringworm Interiors. Meet the demon. Get the full Circus Devils experience. Be surprised and assaulted like we were back in 2001 with what’s still one of the most bugfuck albums in Pollard’s whole discography.

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