Why is Robert Pollard the most underrated songwritter ever?

"Haven't heard the Cosmos record yet"

disapointing record. i had some expectations cause it's the richard davies comeback after some time, but it's skipable stuff.

bob hasn't put out a record i really enjoy since the 2nd last GbV album. circus devils seem like some sort of bad joke. no intention of going near the cosmos record after hearing the reviews..

The Richard Davies songs from the short-lived Cardinal reunion are so staggeringly better than the Cosmos stuff that...it's just sad.

the cosmos album is one of my favorite albums of the year, and my favorite pollard album this year (though most of them have been good). it strikes me as a great piece of pretty, melodic surrealism. for some reason whenever pollard does one of these spacey-moody, low-key dreamy pop collaborations, it gets generally dismissed - like the airport 5 albums or the go back snowball album too, for example. The critical drubbing of the circus devils bugs me too - it's experimental horror-rock, don't expect it to sound like GBV.

I think the drubbing from Davies fans is justified...can't speak for the other side of the aisle.

So guys now that I'm laid off I'm going to start tackling that best of 00s Pollard comp.

do it! would love to hear the hits without the expense and effort involved in buying and plowing through a hundred records i don't really like. of course, a big part of the fun is deciding which ones are "hits"...

I look forward to your findings!

me too! I just got the new one in the mail (not out til March 2010 ...) 11th record since Summer of 2008! Ridiculous.

Can you include some Mist King Urth on there? I never did find that one.

Shit, see this is where I fail because Mist King Urth is one of the few I don't have! Also, I didn't realize that even cutting off at 2000, there are still FOUR GbV albums proper included!

I'd say keep it non-GbV.

That's the way I was leaning because it was going to be way too easy to fill up a big chunk of a disc from those four alone.

After poking around, it seems I do have some Mist King Urth tracks after all. Here's the starting list from which I'm going to pull. I know there are some gaps here, but I feel like between the Crickets comp and random other tracks I've acquired I can piece things in well enough. Seeing these gaps makes me feel like a Pollard slacker though!

Motel of Fools Robert Pollard
Fiction Man Robert Pollard
From A Compound Eye Robert Pollard
Normal Happiness Robert Pollard
Standard Gargoyle Decisions Robert Pollard
Coast to Coast Carpet of Love Robert Pollard
Superman Was a Rocker Robert Pollard
Robert Pollard is Off to Business Robert Pollard
The Crawling Distance Robert Pollard
Elephant Jokes Robert Pollard
Zoom Robert Pollard
Silverfish Trivia Robert Pollard
Ringworm Interiors Circus Devils
Pinball Mars Circus Devils
Sgt. Disco Circus Devils
Ataxia Circus Devils
Gringo Circus Devils
Brown Submarine Boston Spaceships
Headache Revolution Boston Spaceships
The Planets Are Blasted Boston Spaceships
Zero to 99 Boston Spaceships
Life Starts Here Airport 5
Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks Cosmos
Blues and Boogie Shoes Keene Brothers
Lightninghead to Coffee Pot Moping Swans
All That is Holy Psycho and the Birds
We've Moved Psycho and the Birds
Choreographed Man of War Robert Pollard and His Soft Rock Renegades
Turn To Red The Takeovers
Little Green Onion Man The Takeovers
Bad Football The Takeovers

Yikes.

I had Mist King Urth and sold it on ebay (I think). "Heavy prog" iirc.

Well I've always wanted to hear it bcuz the other Pollard/Gillard duo album, Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department, is better than any GbV album this decade.

"fether herd" on the mist king urth album is unlike anything else bob's done

Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department, is better than any GbV album this decade.

yep that's why I bought it too. they're not at all similar really.

not saying it's bad per se but when I decided to unload some records I went through my big pile of GBV and related I made a rule that if I couldn't remember how ANY song went on that record it probably deserved the sell pile.

"they're" meaning Fire Dept. and Mist King

weird. "fether herd" sounds like guided by voices covering birdsongs of the mesozoic. hard to forget, for me at least

jon, why not tower in the fountain of sparks?

Sadly thats one of the few I don't have. I believe I have a couple tracks from it though. That one and Go Back Snowball are both up there on my list of Pollard releases to buy when I have the cash.

lol, jesus, that list 00s records. and I've got a lot of them!

Think the Boston Spaceships records have been my fave of the last few years ...

The two songs I have off Tower...Sparks are kind of lame tbh. Both good tunes that go on repeating their material wayyy too long.

Slowed down a bit to work on year-end stuff and the holidays, but this project is still definitely moving forward! 2009 actually turned out to be one of my favorite post-GbV years for Pollard!

When I made a Pollard mix for a friend, my biggest hangup was putting on a song or two from each album. That's really not the worst approacch - if an album doesn't have a song demanding to be included, then leave it off!

Still working on the project, albeit very very slowly. Mainly bumped this thread to talk about how great the first Pollard of the new decade sounds! Seriously, dude is on a fantastic roll these past two years.

Yes! I'm behind on the Circus Devils stuff, but the solo stuff and particularly the Boston Spaceships have all been grade A. I like Suitcase 3, too.

I did this a few weeks ago, frustrated by having to sort through umpteen records to get my fix. Agree above w/ difficulty in getting every record represented & gave up after awhile:

http://i390.photobucket.com/albums/oo346/HadrianVIII/GrayGardens.jpg

1:14:07

01 Brown Submarine 1:22
02 Dancing Girls And Dancing Men 2:40
03 Heavy Crown 2:40
04 Stiff Me 2:17
05 Gratification To Concrete 3:34
06 Penumbra 1:50
07 Rhoda Rhoda 1:52
08 I'm A Widow 3:37
09 Andy Playboy 1:30
10 Shadow Port 2:59
11 Keep Me Down 2:40
12 Symbols And Heads 2:08
13 You Satisfy Me 3:04
14 Conquerer Of The Moon 5:04
15 When A Man Walks Away 1:49
16 I Surround You Naked 2:42
17 Tattoo Mission 2:44
18 Zero Fix 2:44
19 I In The World 2:01
20 The Right Thing 4:30
21 Canned Food Demons 2:08
22 Gasoline Ragtime 1:38
23 Denied 2:36
24 Towers And Landslides 2:01
25 The Original Heart 2:15
26 (All You Need) To Know 3:45
27 Love Is Stronger Than Witchcraft 4:13
28 Nicely Now 1:51

Love the list Hadrian! I'm still missing a lot of his '00s output, probably close to half.

One song you forgot is "Slow Hamilton," definitely the most melodic song I've heard of the more recent years...

Slow Hamilton is gorgeous. Also, Weatherman and Skin Goddess.

his new dvd is almost enough to cure me of gbv fandom

ahem!

Meddle off Zero to 99 is so great. The whole albums really good.

I have enjoyed the occasional robbert paulard

kinda want to make my own Pollard Oughties best-of... which, since I own exactly none of these records, would probably just mean pirating/ripping as many of them as I can, getting super-stoned, throwing everything on shuffle, and deleting every song that doesn't rock my world on the first listen. I'll let you guys know what I end up with.

came across this recently: http://leatherbagmusic.blogspot.com/2010/05/best-of-robert-pollard.html
haven't listened though! seems like a cool selection.

wow this is wonderful!

love guided by voices, but i've never really progressed past the big GBV albums cuz honestly digging thru all of pollards stuff seems like such a grind...

his first few on matador, not in my airforce and waved out are almost as good as the gbv records he was putting out at the time. his latest one (?) we all got out of the army isn't shabby either

yeah, not in my airforce and waved out are pretty indistinguishable from GBV of that era -- pretty sure those songs were "GBV" songs for all intents and purposes, just that he couldn't put out more than one GBV record a year, or something. They have a lot of the same players. both are pretty essential.

which one had "subspace biographies"? that song rules

that's on Waved Out -- prob one of Pollard's best rockers! starts out awesome, gets better.

Sounds like Wire that song, this is a good thing

really, tho, at the end of every year, Pollard should just: "didn't buy the six albums I put out this year? Here's a playlist of the best 20 songs" ... I'd buy it. maybe that's totally missing the point, but I do find it hard to keep up.

I've tried listening to his post-GBV stuff, but it really isn't very good

Of the stuff I've heard, which is prob'ly like 5% or sumthin'!

i dunno, i always like hearing new stuff by him when I put it on, but after a few listens, I rarely go back to it.

i'd say that first Boston Spaceships record is probably my fave from the last couple years?