Robert Pollard

Certain Songs #1950: Robert Pollard & Doug Gillard – “Pop Zeus”

November 4, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department
Year: 1999

. . .

And so the conceit of Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department was pretty simple: current Guided By Voices guitarist Doug Gillard would play all of the instruments and Robert Pollard would do all of the vocals. Most of the songs were Pollard’s, but some were co-writes, including the towering “Pop Zeus!”

So, because of that, I don’t know who is responsible for the melody of “Pop Zeus!” but I can report that its an absolute killer. Obviously the words and vocals are Pollard’s and the guitars — oh holy god those guitars! — are Gillard’s.

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.

24 Musical Moments To Die For, Part 2

August 29, 2008 by Jim Connelly

NOTE: Because of a godsdammed bug between Flash and Firefox for Windows, I’ve had to break this up into two parts in order for the players to work for those with that particular configuration. Stupid internets.