Robert Pollard "Rhoda Rhoda"

The word "genius" gets applied far too often to Robert Pollard [ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 ], and unfortunately so. Aside from "hero," "genius" is probably the most over-appropriated piece of critical hyperbole, and it's pretty lazy too, offering an excuse to flog Pollard's frequent excursions into self-indulgent whimsy as "not up to his typical level of genius" &c. Pollard is one of indie rock's premiere iconoclasts, as much as he fetishizes his own hit-and-miss back catalog and wallows in the sheer accumulation of songs that are, by definition, rarities. Guided By Voices, despite the participation of some pretty solid musicians (Tobin Sprout) over the years, was essentially a "bandonym" for Pollard himself, to use the term coined by Carl Wilson in an EMP paper, in the same vein as Smog (Bill Callahan), Palace (Will Oldham), Destroyer (Dan Bejar) and Mountain Goats (John Darnielle). Pollard's a weird addendum to this category, mostly because his motivations are different. He's prolific to the point of disorder, and cobbles together identities and collaborators to fill whatever muse makes itself prominent. As Guided by Voices, he was the cocksure British rockstar, but in black jeans and actually from Dayton. But after 1996, as just Robert Pollard, he was less brash, less hook-laden and a bit more experimental. This was probably due to the fact that solo Pollard got the leftovers from GBV Pollard (I'm not sure how his other collabs worked). But it's the logical progression for the math teacher playing rock legend, though---there has to be the self-indulgent solo stuff, right? But now that GBV is no more, all the good (and the bad) goes to Pollard solo, and we not coincidentally get From A Compound Eye, both his first post-GBV and also best-yet-solo record. Forthcoming Normal Happiness isn't trying to shoot so high (it's probably leftovers from F.A.C.E., but let's not go there), but it's got its moments for sure and it sounds, well, happy. "Rhoda Rhoda" (mp3) shows that Pollard's still excising the late-period high-energy GBV from his system. It's got the potential of "Glad Girls" without the exquisite production backdrop, and it recalls "My Kind of Soldier" but briefer---all hook and nothing more, everything riding on that distinctly Pollardian (sorry) faux-British Invasion affect, which, of course, came packaged with the solo transition.

Normal Happiness will come out in October on Merge. Pollard's website.

(And the picture at the top is defnintely not the album cover art, just a picture I like. It's from here.)