Archives for November 2020

Certain Songs #1949: Robert Pollard – “Far Out Crops”

November 2, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Kid Marine
Year: 1999

. . .

Recorded around the same time as Do The Collapse — the album with Ric Ocasek where GBV discovered that even with polish, they were too weird to fully break big — with the only real difference in personnel being that Pollard handled all of the guitars, I honestly don’t remember a fucking thing about Kid Marine, except that it was the first in what Pollard called his Fading Captain Series. Or maybe that was the label. Or maybe both.

Oh, and “Far Out Crops,” one of the weird experiments on Pollard’s solo albums that well and truly worked.

Certain Songs #1948: Robert Pollard – “Subspace Biographies”

November 1, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Waved Out
Year: 1998

. . .

Because he didn’t have enough places to put all of his songs, Robert Pollard started doing solo albums in the mid-1990s in addition to all of the Guided By Voices albums, EPs and compilations he was also releasing. And for the most part, it was all too much: I dutifully bought the solo albums, but I didn’t ever really like more than a few songs from them.

That said, at least on the earlier ones, there was often at least one song as good as anything on a GBV album, like “Subspace Biographies,” from 1998’s Waved Out, which was released in between 1997’s Mag Earwhig! and 1999’s Do The Collapse for those of you keeping score at home.