Album of the week: Robert Pollard
Alex Ward
Issue date: 10/4/07 Section: Arts & Entertainment
- Page 1 of 1
Robert Pollard
Coast to Coast Carpet of Love
To fully understand this record to fully savor it, you know, swish it around in the mouth like good cheap wine or malt liquor-you'd have to be from the river-dampened, beersoaked, industrial wasteland of Dayton, Ohio.
You have to picture the little park in the Oregon District, the one with the old leaf-choked iron fountains where the saddest old hunched-over drunks drink from paper bags and stare at the bleakness. This particular park happens to be near some of the clubs where Robert Pollard got his start in the long ago days of Guided By Voices.
Pollard's gone solo now. He cast off his old band long ago, after putting out only, what, like 13 records with them? Which were all, in reality, Robert Pollard records.
This man is the most prolific, and the most important, songwriter in America in the last twenty years. He's so important because he's so aware of the tradition he's working in, and he, like an Atlas, is holding up the rock n roll sky for all of us. You may not know it, but this titan of rock n roll is making your life better.
A few songs into this record (and a fourth way into a bottle of rum) I started to fall in love with it. I started to believe in rock n roll again.
Do you realize how important it is to believe in rock n roll? It's the only culture we've got. Screw modern theatre, screw poetry rock n roll absorbs both of these forms and turns them into something you can dance to.
Robert Pollard understands this. Now in his late forties, Polland gave up teaching school and decided to devote himself full time to the beautiful futility of rock n roll. For along time I wondered why he or anyone else was doing it. But after listening to this record, I remember why.
Any lasting work of art has a certain vulnerability to it. There are countless rock songs that blow you away from the get go, and that's useful, in its place. But in that place, there's soon an emptiness; a song that's all riffs and beat will soon leave you with nothing.
On Pollard's latest record, there are plenty of hooks, and they come along heroically at just the right moment to save the song, and to save you, the listener. To make you believe.
This record does what every good rock record should do it makes you want to go out and buy a guitar and start making your own songs. It makes you want to martyr yourself in the loserhood of rock n roll until you reach the light.
This record is full of unremarkable moments, that are saved by remarkable hooks, which make you want to go back and listen to the songs again and again until you understand fully and that is the point.
A+
WLJS Top Ten Records of the Week
1. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
2. Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil
3. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
4. Caribou - Andorra
5. Magik Markers - Boss
6. Angels of Light - We Are Him
7. New Pornographers - Challengers
8. Figurines - When the Deer Wore Blue
9. Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
10. Calvin Harris - I Created Disco
Coast to Coast Carpet of Love
To fully understand this record to fully savor it, you know, swish it around in the mouth like good cheap wine or malt liquor-you'd have to be from the river-dampened, beersoaked, industrial wasteland of Dayton, Ohio.
You have to picture the little park in the Oregon District, the one with the old leaf-choked iron fountains where the saddest old hunched-over drunks drink from paper bags and stare at the bleakness. This particular park happens to be near some of the clubs where Robert Pollard got his start in the long ago days of Guided By Voices.
Pollard's gone solo now. He cast off his old band long ago, after putting out only, what, like 13 records with them? Which were all, in reality, Robert Pollard records.
This man is the most prolific, and the most important, songwriter in America in the last twenty years. He's so important because he's so aware of the tradition he's working in, and he, like an Atlas, is holding up the rock n roll sky for all of us. You may not know it, but this titan of rock n roll is making your life better.
A few songs into this record (and a fourth way into a bottle of rum) I started to fall in love with it. I started to believe in rock n roll again.
Do you realize how important it is to believe in rock n roll? It's the only culture we've got. Screw modern theatre, screw poetry rock n roll absorbs both of these forms and turns them into something you can dance to.
Robert Pollard understands this. Now in his late forties, Polland gave up teaching school and decided to devote himself full time to the beautiful futility of rock n roll. For along time I wondered why he or anyone else was doing it. But after listening to this record, I remember why.
Any lasting work of art has a certain vulnerability to it. There are countless rock songs that blow you away from the get go, and that's useful, in its place. But in that place, there's soon an emptiness; a song that's all riffs and beat will soon leave you with nothing.
On Pollard's latest record, there are plenty of hooks, and they come along heroically at just the right moment to save the song, and to save you, the listener. To make you believe.
This record does what every good rock record should do it makes you want to go out and buy a guitar and start making your own songs. It makes you want to martyr yourself in the loserhood of rock n roll until you reach the light.
This record is full of unremarkable moments, that are saved by remarkable hooks, which make you want to go back and listen to the songs again and again until you understand fully and that is the point.
A+
WLJS Top Ten Records of the Week
1. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
2. Black Lips - Good Bad Not Evil
3. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
4. Caribou - Andorra
5. Magik Markers - Boss
6. Angels of Light - We Are Him
7. New Pornographers - Challengers
8. Figurines - When the Deer Wore Blue
9. Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
10. Calvin Harris - I Created Disco
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
DaveA
posted 10/22/07 @ 2:12 PM CST
Robert Pollard is the most criminally overlooked songwriter of this or any generation. The man's music is heroin for the ears.
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