C or D : Guided By Voices.

like the songs are tissues pulled from a box and cast aside

gbv in a nutshell

the new one is really great, and I haven't felt like saying that about any of the post-reunion albums. his focus is tight, his hit-rate is high.

Yup -- there are some fantastic songs scattered throughout the previous albums by this iteration of the band, and Space Gun was a high-water mark in particular, but even that was fairly spotty compared to Surrender Your Poppy Field. This probably won't sound like high praise to everybody, but I think this is the most I've enjoyed a GBV album since Earthquake Glue. Tons of cool little touches on this one, and there's kind of a theatricality that I feel like sets it apart from maybe any other GBV album.

This probably won't sound like high praise to everybody, but I think this is the most I've enjoyed a GBV album since Earthquake Glue.
This probably won't sound like high praise to everybody, but I think this is the most I've enjoyed a GBV album since Earthquake Glue.
This probably won't sound like high praise to everybody, but I think this is the most I've enjoyed a GBV album since Earthquake Glue.

Just out of curiosity: has his post-breakup output exceeded his pre-breakup output yet?

― Hot, Now, and Oh-So-Very Wow! (Old Lunch), Friday, February 21, 2020 12:52 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think we still need 2 more LPs to match it on album count. if we're talking pollard and not gbv then it exceeded it ages ago via side projects and solo records

Started giving it a listen but right away don’t like the production that much. It’s like those Black Sabbath records when you can’t hear Geezer’s finger noises anymore.

Is the Acid Ranch stuff worth listening to?

Even for a catalog of his size I feel like there are a disproportionate number of songs with the word "Arthur" in the title.

xp I bought Some of the Magic Syrup Was Preserved because it happened to be released at the peak of my "buy everything with Bob's name on it" phase and I would generously describe it as inessential.

like the coolest thing about it is it has the song he lifted the spoken part from the end of "Alright" from.

agreed inessential but it when it comes up on shuffle I always dig it

The Who vs Porky the Pig
If we’re talking essential inessential

this one feels like a 00s pollard solo album to me in style and quality, still not as good as the 00s gbv records but fine

I'm toying with the idea of trying to put together a Human Amusements II from the reunion records but it's like 9 hours of music already to whittle down, which is exhausting.

Decided to give this a shot. I realized Half Smiles of the Decomposed actually came out after the Human Amusements comp, and with that album as fair game for a best-of volume 2, there's actually a nice bit of symmetry right now, because each volume would cover a 16-year span during which 15 GBV albums were released, by my count. So figured I'd try to do this before the next one comes out.

I never really got into the classic lineup reunion albums, other than maybe Motivational Jumpsuit, but I've got at least one track from each of them on here. Though you might be disappointed if you prefer that era to the current one.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1idxGsnYtzSHZY2ipxQSdP

cool thanks!

Oh wow, that's impressive. I'd have made room for "Sport Component National" but I can't complain as I've only made like 10% progress towards eliminating material in general.

vampire on titus getting a reissue for RSD

"Imperial Racehorsing" is my #1 essential track from the classic lineup reunion era.

pretty sure "overloaded" is my OPO from '10s gbv. dunno what my pick would be when restricted to pollard songs

I'd have made room for "Sport Component National" but I can't complain as I've only made like 10% progress towards eliminating material in general.

Love that song! Ended up cutting it in favor of more of what I thought of as crowd-pleasers. (I wanted to keep the running time more or less the same as Human Amusements.)

"See My Field" is my OPO from the last decade.

I've been working from home all week so I've listened to the new one a bunch. It's pretty good! I haven't heard anything since Space Gun, considering doing some back tracking now.

Still think August by Cake is the best I've heard from this lineup, but mainly because he let the other guys contribute (which unfortunately gave us "High Five Hall of Famers", but "Overloaded" and "Sudden Fiction" are so good it doesn't matter).

"Volcano", "Arthur Has Business Elsewhere" and "Steely Dodger" are the big keepers from this one for me. Also "Whoa Nelly" is pretty cool.

OK, time to go back and listen to these three fucking records from 2019 that I skipped.

Do you think Bob re-programs that same beat on his drum machine every time or does he have it saved

I want to train a neural network on Bob song titles but exclude "Your Cricket Is Rather Unique" and take bets on how long it takes the neural network to come up with "Your Cricket Is Rather Unique".

"Tiger on Top" is pretty fun! Otherwise Sweating the Plague feels like he's on autopilot so far.

Guitar player in my old band used to lighten the mood by launching into fake Pollard songs: “This one’s called Canadian Toothbrush Girls!” “This one’s called Umbrellas Go Viral!”

There are a lot of fake Pollard songs on this one.

His songwriting would be a lot more interesting to me at this point if he veered off of the rock music highway even periodically. I feel like he is very conservative in this way -- esp w choice of collaborators etc. Someone with as much energy as he has could be writing more ambitious music.

But isn’t the lack of ambition sort of his thing?

Not that I was aware of? Back in the 80s he probably dreamed of this day if I’m to believe the stuff I’ve read. Now we are here.

I think his major ambition was to make a rock record that sounded like FM stuff he listened to growing up.

he did try that once or twice

pretty sure "overloaded" is my OPO from '10s gbv. dunno what my pick would be when restricted to pollard songs
― ciderpress, Wednesday, March 4, 2020 1:59 PM (one week ago)

Same, I'd say this is the best GBV song 2010-2019.

My 2nd favorite is "Hang Up and Try Again." Class Clown Spots a UFO is probably the least-spotty LP from start to finish.

I don't know, I don't really want him to show more ambition. Restraint, on the other hand...

But obviously from his standpoint it's more a question of reputation vs. steady income so ::shrug::

So now that I've backtracked to Sweating the Plague and Warp and Woof and found them both rather meh, I'm that much more impressed with Surrender Your Poppy Field. Looking at the tracklisting of Zeppelin Over China and thinking maybe I'll hold off before diving into that thing.

I might need to give Space Gun a few more spins since everyone seemed to like it way more than I did, new one has definitely passed August by Cake in my personal rankings though. Will also add "Physician" to the list of essential tracks, that was a big grower for me.

I shudder to think how many new songs there will be in the next six months

Alien Lanes getting vinyl reissue in the summer. It's 25 years old. I am so so old now.

we are sweating the plague while doing isolation drills

half smiles of the decomposed under the bushes, under the stars

There's a terrible action movie playing on the background on television at the moment and, every so often, I glance over at it to see Robert Pollard in it - except it's Tom Berenger and, if anything, Pollard looks even more like him now they're both ruddy faced, bloated and silver haired.

Pollard looks much less bloated for 62 than I ever would have thought, actually.

I've been taking advantage of the lockdown to go through all of these records and give add'l listens to *all* the Fading Captain stuff and "side" stuff, solo records etc. gumming up my hard drive. Decades of getting numbed to the glut has really made me take this catalog for granted. It's pretty mindblowing, chaff be damned.

One thing that w/ time and a wider lens really jumps out: the current version of this band is fucking great, and every one of their now seven records save for maybe Sweating The Plague is better than every one of the seven preceding "reunion" records. You can hear how these guys respond Bob and encourage subtler and more dynamic writing on his part. And this last one is maybe the best of those, too?

Haha, I'm doing a similar chronological trip through Pollard's catalog. Up to Half Smiles of the Decomposed right this minute, which is a lot better than I'd remembered and has a killer first side.

I had the same experience w/ that one...I found it totally unremarkable on release but there's a bunch of good stuff there

Is that so? Good to hear. I've only ever really been focused on the "classic" lineup and earlier because back then Bob (with Tobin) was so interested in experimenting... after that era is was just Bob striving to be the indie The Who. Every song became another mid-tempo big chord rocker... therefore only a few albums here and there stood out but all of it is so complacent in that formula. Even if done well it blends together. The experiments of the old days were like these little audio sketches and Bob's collages complimented them well in that regard; like these tiny little surreal worlds cut and paste together. And all the "throwaways" were at the very least palette cleansers and/or functioned as interludes to the bigger moments. Albums were like journeys through backroads where you see a lot of weird things pass by quickly and frequently, later albums just felt like taking the highway- a lot of the same with steady momentum.

My copy of that new Zeppelin Over Dayton album-by-album book is supposed to arrive tomorrow, and I just finally finished Closer You Are - so it's gonna be a Pollard summer around these parts.

I have that in the mail, too.... Evan, there's been a lot more shorter/out stuff on the recent records

after that era is was just Bob striving to be the indie The Who. Every song became another mid-tempo big chord rocker...

I'm actually looking forward to my revisit through the years between GbV. I'd almost forgotten just how many interesting projects he tossed off in that inter-zone - Keene Brothers with Tommy Keene, Mars Classroom with Gary Waleik from Big Dipper and Cosmos with Richard Davies. This was also the era when he started my very favorite side project band, Boston Spaceships.