What I Listened To from the Robert Pollard Extended Universe - May 26

This month I played at Euroheedfest - a long-running Robert Pollard fan festival - with the band Your Volunteer Fire Department. Leading up to our performance, I listened exclusively to Pollard penned songs. After the show, I assumed I’d have had my fill of the greatest guitar based music of all time and would start listening to music by other artists again. It actually turned out that I had a whole new batch of Pollard songs I’d heard for the first time and couldn’t stop listening to. So here’s a special edition of my monthly music post, normal service will resume next month (hopefully!).

Over the Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox - Guided By Voices

Band of Pricks were the headlining act at Euroheedfest (as always) and they killed it (as always). “Over the Neptune / Mesh Grey Fox” was a highlight of their set and is a highlight of Guided By Voices’ oeuvre. This is a song that‘s so perfect you can’t believe that not only did an actual real-life person who’s alive at the same time as you are sat down and wrote it but that the time they wrote this song they were intending to give up on their dream of being a musician and give into to the pressure to take their teaching job more seriously. Robert Pollard’s life is a cliched music biopic waiting to happen, surely?!

Be It Not for the Serpentine Rain Dodger - The Takeovers

An interesting aspect of the legendary prolific tendencies of Robert Pollard is that they significantly intensified after the initial Guided By Voices break-up. Not only did Pollard release a slew of solo records but also many short lived collaborative projects (usually multiple per year). It’s uncontroversial to say that in this period, that the consistency of Pollard’s output took a hit. The resulting ballooning of his discography has also made it quite intimidating for new listeners. However, it has resulted in the ability to go crate-digging for a single songwriter. Exploring the Pollard back catalogue is akin to going to a record shop in which all the records are written by the same person. Occasionally you can find some hidden gems that makes the time you spent browsing worthwhile. The Takeovers is a collaboration with GBV bassist Chris Slusarenko that yielded two albums including “Turn to Red”. “Be It Not for the Serpentine Rain Dodger” is buried on the B-Side and it’s a fantastic Pollard ripper that sounds like a lost Redd Kross classic.

Trashed Aircraft Baby - Boston Spaceships

Of the Robert Pollard bands that emerged in the wake of Guided By Voices 2004 break-up, Boston Spaceships might have the highest hit-rate for me. In our Euroheedfest set, we played stone cold classic “John The Dwarf Wants To Become an Angel” from the album “Our Cubehouse Still Rocks” (you’re going to read a lot of incredible song/album titles in this post). In the past month however, the album that I’ve been playing the most by Boston Spaceships is Zero to 99. The stretch of songs that starts at “Let It Rest for a Little While” and ends at “Exploding Anthills” is one of the best consecutive set of songs that Pollard has achieved (and this was in 2009, 15 years after “Bee Thousand”!). “Trashed Aircraft Baby” is one the hardest rockers that Pollard has ever penned, it’s pure Who worship at it’s best.

Sameday - J Mascis + The Fog

“More Light” is a J Mascis solo record - in which he plays all instruments (including his first love, the drums) - that has guest appearances from Kevin Shields and Robert Pollard. I don’t think I really need to describe the album in much further detail than that but if you really need more convincing, just listen to “Sameday” (which also happens to feature the most audible Pollard backing vocals).

Pop Zeus - Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard

This is the song I’m most bummed out we didn’t get to play at Euroheedfest (but we did play our fair share of classics and couple of other tracks from the same record!). A mandatory inclusion since our band shares it’s name from the album it’s featured on (and also it’s such a bop!). “Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department” is a highlight of Pollard’s discography and comes recommended as a great entry-point into his works outside of GBV.

She Wants to Know - Guided By Voices

Guided by Voices are well-known for being lo-fi pioneers but they didn’t start out that way. Their first EP, 1986’s “Forever Since Breakfast” is one of the most accessible releases in their catalogue. It’s a side of GBV you might not have heard before, a short set of jangle-pop (released-after and definitely influenced-by “Murmur”) featuring crystal-clear (for them) production and notably without Pollard’s infamous “English” singing accent. Before joining Your Volunteer Fire Department I’d never heard “She Wants to Know” before and now it’s one of my favourite GBV songs (and this is despite having listened to it dozens of times to learn how to play it!). The lyrics are some of the least opaque penned by Pollard, an argument with his lover about spending too much time on the road touring (made endearing when you realise that at the time they’d barely played live and would not tour until almost a decade later).