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Isolation Drills

Certain Songs #563: Guided by Voices – “How’s My Drinking?”

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gbv isolation Album: Isolation Drills
Year: 2001

Of course, drinking is one of those things that is all bound up in the mythology of Guided by Voices, as anybody who has ever seen Robert Pollard on stage, chugging beer after beer in between (or during) his songs would know.

So figure “How’s My Drinking” to be Pollard’s version of “Here Comes a Regular,” a slow, sad ballad that takes a deep dark look at what he might be doing to himself.

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Certain Songs #562: Guided by Voices – “Run Wild”

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gbv isolation Album: Isolation Drills
Year: 2001

Just wanna to get some perspective here. Isolation Drills was the 12th studio album from Guided by Voices, not counting all of the singles, EPs, collections of ephemera and Robert Pollard solo albums that had come out in the second half of the 1990s.

So by this time, the song count was deep into the 100s, and yet, like I said yesterday, Isolation Drills might just be the best album Pollard ever released, and the an “Run Wild” is a key reason why.

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Guided by Voices – Isolation Drills

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(TVT)

Robert Pollard’s strategy remains the same: record everything that his muse spews up. Lately, though, he puts the songs that were written 15 min after they were recorded on his Fading Captain Series of solo projects, and while there is the occasional gem (“Pop Zeus!“) on those records, for the most part, they are for his ever-dwindling cult. Because he still has dreams of Rock ‘n’ Roll glory, he puts the great stuff on the GBV records, and Isolation Drills is full of it.

Songs like “Fair Touching,” “Glad Girls,” and “Run Wild” are the shit, all full of chunky guitars, rumbling drums (courtesy of ex-Breeder Jim McPherson, one of the secretly great drummers of our time) sing-along melodies, and, as an extra added bonus, lyrics that nearly make sense! It also feelsAnd when celebrated onstage beer-chugger Pollard stops to ask “How’s My Drinking?” you not only get sense that while he still dreams of Rock and Roll glory, its also beginning to seep into his nightmares.

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Part of my 2001 Top Ten list as published by Neumu on Jan 11, 2002