Does anyone give a shit about Bob Pollard anymore?

"anymore"

Ahhhh right.Key word and all.But...

Robert Polllard played his first solo show last night to a half empty crowd in Athens, GA

Why is Robert Pollard the most underrated songwritter ever?

jus sayin.

Sorry.I'm a tad rusty.Point taken.

Anyone got any Pollard solo recs? I fell off the bandwagon around the end days of GBV.

Last seen playing bass in the Berkle Perks to an audience of four in Osage, Iowa

A tepid Circle Jerks tribute

mentioned in the "underrated" thread, but the new mars classroom record is stellar. maybe my fave pollard release in the past 10 years!

I didn't know that was out or "available". I've been really anxious to hear that one.

oh sorry, i've got a promo. not sure when the release date is.

03/29 according to gbvdb.

there ya go. it is really quite good.

Good to hear. I really liked the Lifeguards, but was kind of let down by Space City Kicks.

the hits keep on comin'

Boston Spaceships Announce New Double LP
Let It Beard Out August 2nd On Guided By Voices, Inc.

"Since late 2008 or so Pollard has enjoyed a late-career renaissance, consistently rewarding those of us still paying attention..." PITCHFORK

"Defying logic, the famously productive Robert Pollard is getting even more prolific with age" SPIN

"Pollard seems to be aligning himself with other notable eccentrics - Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock, Bowie - for a generally off-kilter tableau of peculiar settings" BLURT

Let's begin with a bold and yet entirely defensible premise: The new Boston Spaceships double album, Let It Beard, is the most ambitious, varied, sprawling — and yet entirely coherent— record that Robert Pollard has made in his entire career.

This is not an accident. Though some—understandably confused by Pollard's ambitious, varied, and sprawling output post-Guided By Voices—may have earlier consigned Boston Spaceships to the "Pollard side-project" pile, (which is admittedly considerable), this is not a side-project. This is a band. This is Pollard's main band. Let It Beard, the fifth Boston Spaceships album in its three year existence, is nevertheless the product of more than half a year's work by that new band, and it shows.

Pollard initially delivered to Portland-based guitarist/bassist/keyboardist (and ex-GBV member) Chris Slusarenko acoustic demos of 40 songs. Between the two they whittled down the list to 26, for which Bob then sketched a rough sequence. Slusarenko worked out the basic structures and took the songs to drummer John Moen (Decemberists, Stephen Malkmus). Chris and John then banged out the basic tracks over the course of three days in engineer Jonathan Drews' basement studio in Portland. It was Chris' idea that John not hear any of the songs prior to recording, in an attempt to engender some of the tension and spontaneity found in the early Guided By Voices records. He felt this method had been partly jettisoned in the latter stage of that band's illustrious career, in favor of a more professional approach. Moen, who Pollard calls "the most creative drummer I've ever worked with", proved more than up to the task of working quickly with unfamiliar material. As John himself says, "It was tremendously freeing to work like that. And a little scary."

But that was the easy part. Over the next six months or so, Slusarenko fleshed out the arrangements, adding new sounds and coming up with new ways to record some of those sounds (including recording on 4-track, Bee Thousand-style, in his house). He kept a flowchart of the album's sequence and instrumental ideas that threatened to take over every available space in his home, and lost hours of sleep thinking about ways to: make each song distinctive, make the transitions between each song work, make the overall scheme of the album coherent and keep from losing his mind.

What happened next was remarkable. Pollard, notorious for changing the song order, replacing one song with another, changing his mind about the album title fifty or sixty times over the course of recording, and even on occasion shit-canning the whole deal, did none of these things. The album was always going to be called Let It Beard. It was always going to be a double album. And though he wrote and re-wrote lyrics and changed the titles of some of the demos, he stuck to the original sequence. This has never happened before, either during or post Guided By Voices.

The result: what Pollard has called "a subconscious concept album about the sorry state of rock and roll." A 75 minute thrill ride through the many forms of rock Pollard has mastered in his three plus decades of writing and recording songs. "'The White Album' meets 'Quadrophenia' meets 'Jesus Christ Superstar'" he says. "Meets 'Same Place The Fly Got Smashed'", adds Slusarenko. An album with strings, horns, keyboards, a female soul singer, and guest guitar turns from such luminaries as Colin Newman from Wire, J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr, Steve Wynn from The Dream Syndicate, Mick Collins from Dirtbombs and the Gories, Dave Rick from Phantom Tollbooth (among others), and some guy named Mitch Mitchell.

Chris all the finished music of Let It Beard to Ohio where Bob "put the head on the body", as he likes to say, by recording vocals with Todd Tobias at Waterloo Studios in Kent. Over the course of last year, the record slowly began to take shape. "It's difficult to make an album under what I call the 'mushroom cloud' of Guided By Voices", admits Slusarenko. "Especially now that the reunion tour is happening. But we worked really, really hard on this one, and it's important not just to myself and John, but to Bob as well. He's fond of saying 'I used to be in Guided By Voices, but I'm in Boston Spaceships now.'"

This is not a contradiction. Even as Pollard delights in re-creating the classic line-up of Guided By Voices for fans who never got to see that incarnation of the band, he has never been and never will be a man who trades on nostalgia. His impulse is always to push ahead, to go farther, to stretch his songwriting abilities to its limits: to actually get better. He doesn't begrudge those who revere the Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes/UTBUTS era of GBV but knows that, as an artist, he has long since moved past those benchmarks in search of higher ground.

Let It Beard takes Pollard's magic to a whole other level. It has the patchwork quilt/crazy collisions of Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes, but weds them to a variety of sonic textures, quickly shifting styles, and pseudo-epic songs-within-songs that down-shift and twist abruptly and wonderfully before taking flight or speeding straight into a brick wall. The songs themselves are more expansive and ambitious than any he's written before. "Nobody writes 'Happiness Is a Warm Gun'-type songs, anymore", he says. "So I figured I would. And for this record, I wrote a bunch of 'em". The musical settings are sure-handed but never showy, and the arrangements well-considered but never labored. Making a record sound simple requires enormous effort, and even if, as Slusarenko says, "I nearly lost my mind when we got to around song 18", that effort pays off in pure rock gold here. Even the title itself, Let It Beard, contains multitudes of innuendos: Let It Be, bee, beer, weird, beard-rock, weird-rock - we could do this all day. It's a monster, and the only thing that could prevent someone saying it's the best thing Pollard has ever done is the sure knowledge that he has already written the next Boston Spaceships record. But that is another story for another day. Dig the Beard, and dig it now. And as always, friends, never forget: play it loud.

That's intriguing for sure. The Mars Classroom record is indeed pretty solid, and I'm waking my way through the other Boston Spaceships LPs.

yeah spaceships stuff is pretty solid overall.

good news. the three albums he's put out already this year (are there more?) are my favorites in a long, long time

lessee there's been
space city kicks
lifeguards
mars classroom
lord of the birdcage (don't think this one is out yet)

lifeguards thing is pretty nice too. haven't listened to the others too much.

Dig the Beard is a perfect title for a Pollard epic.

The result: what Pollard has called "a subconscious concept album about the sorry state of rock and roll." A 75 minute thrill ride through the many forms of rock Pollard has mastered in his three plus decades of writing and recording songs. "'The White Album' meets 'Quadrophenia' meets 'Jesus Christ Superstar'" he says. "Meets 'Same Place The Fly Got Smashed'", adds Slusarenko. An album with strings, horns, keyboards, a female soul singer, and guest guitar turns from such luminaries as Colin Newman from Wire, J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr, Steve Wynn from The Dream Syndicate, Mick Collins from Dirtbombs and the Gories, Dave Rick from Phantom Tollbooth (among others), and some guy named Mitch Mitchell.
really does sound wild. hope it lives up to the description! is bob blowing his GBV reunion bucks on string sections?

dare to dream!

btw, the mars classroom (collaboration with the guy from big dipper) is pretty solid

yeah i love it. and an ilxor plays the drums on it, so it's extra good.

sweet. listening to go back snowball "it is divine" right now, wondering if there'll ever be another mcgaughan/pollard album

actually don't think i ever heard that one...never heard those sprout/pollard records either. what were they called airport jive? something?

ha, airport 5. airport jive would work too as pollardiana, i think.

for sure. possible memoir title too

i know there are a million pollard albums but go back snowball is way worth your time

new spaceships pretty good!

yeah! i like it. just posted my review over here
http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/8475303127/the-boston-spaceships-let-it-beard-the-boston

I really like it! Part of me wants Mascis to team up with Pollard more often, I really like the way that track sounds.

Pitchfork wrong as usual.

yeah a pollard album w/ mascis on lead throughout would be ... something I would listen to.

here's the word from chris slusarenko:
Yes...many of you have been emailing me the last couple of days and it's true--Bob has decided that Let It Beard is going to be the the last Boston Spaceships record. Thanks to all who came along for the ride and hope you are digging Let It Beard big time. Thanks

kind of imagine in a few weeks there'll be an announcement of some new band with the same dudes in it, though.

True, true.

i guess pollard is definitely not doing another GBV album? the classic lineup thing is over after this fall, right?

That's what he's been saying all along, but you never can tell what he's going to do next. Maybe Boston Spaceships is dissolving so he can bring back a GbV record? Not going to hold my breath for it, but I'm curious to see whats up next.

GBV studio album is rumored but supposedly these last few festival dates are the "final" reunion dates so the future is uncertain.

Frankly, I wish he'd slow down but god knows that's never gonna happen.

My promo of Let It Beard doesn't have all the big name credits, but who cares: following current protocol, must of the duds are near the beginning, then it just keeps building. I'd say thee best of pre-Bowie Mott The Hoople,among others--overall, avidly overcast Midwestern Anglophila, Top Ten tempest in a beermug.

But not *just* early 70s, I get your Wire take too, Tyler.

I mean, even without knowing the actual Colin Newman was on there.

ha, yeah, i wrote that originally not knowing Newman was actually on the record, but added him in. early mott is a good call.

And maybe early Pretty Things, Pink Fairies, Deviants? (the latter two I know mostly from comps)

the song titles made me lol
A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0uVT3KB4QE
kind of an amazing clip my friend just sent me
funny that the story angle with them at this time was "omg they're old!!" but they were what, mid-30s? SO OLD.
maybe I'm just old now.

so, colin newman is on which Let It Beard tracks?

i'm not sure! mascis is the only one that's really self-evident.
(i got a promo download sans credits)

yes re: mascis. i guess credits are another casualty of the Download Age. how are we supposed to know anything anymore?

aha! http://www.gbvdb.com/track.asp?trackid=41350

thanks! and i see Steve Wynn's on "...London Guys"

i've gotta share this with anyone that still might give a shit about bob after the gbv trax poll. the guitar here is maybe the most gorgeous guitar part i've ever heard on any pollard project, including the keene brothers. and the vocals aren't too shabby either. the takeovers are just bob and chris slusarenko (from the boston spaceships, et al).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZCef3aAcJg

happy birthday bob

http://www.jamesgreer.net/2011/10/31/hardcore-ufos/
^^ 1983 version of "hardcore ufos"
the "what's your angle, mary ann" part killed me because it sounds almost exactly like "carrie anne" --

"build a playground in your mind" still there too
good song, i still give a shit

Still giving a shit, listening to the new Circus Devils as I type this.

another new gbv tune http://soundcloud.com/firerecords/gbv-doughnut

So, uh, GBVDB already has a listing for ANOTHER new Guided By Voices album due out on 5/22/12 called Class Clown Spots a UFO? I hadn't heard that we'd be getting two new GBV discs next year.

yeah, apparently that one hasn't been recorded yet, but it's happening. GBV! GBV!

yes. 2 albums next year. there are photos from the sessions of the next one on the robert pollard facebook feed. its a great feed btw.

I woke up with Liar's Tale stuck in my head and a burning need to share this fact: Nick Andopolis is Bob Pollard.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_2Czbpk33PI/0.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_EwJl6gvLjWA/RrbGbwEeiLI/AAAAAAAAAIE/WIA49aHytns/s320/bob_pollard.jpg