Robert Pollard
From a Compound Eye
(Merge)
Nestled in a black hole somewhere
in the unobservable universe, there is a parallel reality in which
Robert Pollard is a rock god. In this realm of total awesomeness,
there is only one radio station (FM and album-oriented, natch), the
human liver is eternal, and no one ridicules you simply because
you’re pushing 50 and still doing onstage high kicks. Here
the former Guided by Voices frontman sells out football stadiums,
not just indie-rock clubs; here his boozehound heroics, flagrant
Daltreyisms, and ability to crank out genius pop melodies by the
thousands are admired by everyone, not just mildly maladjusted
alternageeks. What Pollard calls the “four Ps” (punk,
psych, prog, and pop) rule the airwaves, and the inhabitants never
get bored because, as luck would have it, they’re all
headphone-crowned guitar fiends, stoned immaculate and perpetually
primed for the Pollardian playlist (e.g., the Who, Genesis, T. Rex,
lots of Guided by Voices). The iPod, the CD player, even the humble
cassette deck will never be invented here, and no one will care. It’s no accident that From a Compound Eye, Pollard’s
first solo album since Guided by Voices disbanded, was conceived as
a double album. Even on the CD, the track listing is helpfully
divided into four “sides,” a cheekily reactionary
gesture that allows plenty of room for his arena-sized ambitions.
Although there are enough instances of lo-fi experimentalism to
appease fans of early GBV, the bulk of the album’s 26 (!)
songs are professionally rendered, perfectly conceived examples of
the four-P paradigm, from the hook-happy pop of “Dancing
Girls and Dancing Men” to the bombastic prog of “Love
Is Stronger than Witchcraft” to the Humbert Humbert-meets-Bon
Scott psych-punk of “I’m a Widow.” Few artists
could fill 70 minutes in such a satisfying way; few are brave
enough to try. Beam us up, Robert.
Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3
. . .Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick
(Down There/Red Eye)
Over the past quarter-century,
Steve Wynn has preached the curative powers of filth, beckoning his
followers to a promised land located somewhere between Neil
Young’s Zuma and the Velvet Underground’s Chelsea. The
former Dream Syndicate leader combines the grimy grandeur of Nuggets-era garage
bands and the ragged glory of Neil Young with the lyrical
virtuosity of Television, crafting a singular style that
doesn’t change with each passing fad. In the Miracle 3
— drummer Linda Pitmon, bassist Dave DeCastro, and guitarist
Jason Victor — Wynn has found the ideal accomplices, as
anyone who’s caught one of their rare stateside gigs can
attest. (When I saw them headline Twangfest a few years ago,
40-year-old men were actually crowd-surfing.) . . .Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick, recorded in 10 days at Tucson’s Wavelab
studios, may be the closest approximation yet of these incendiary
live sets. The opening cut, “Wired,” sounds
a bit like the Stooges covering one of Bob Dylan’s
talking-blues songs, pitting Wynn’s distorted sneer against a
furious dual-guitar fracas, and “Killing Me” sounds
like a train made of knives, grafting the classic Bo Diddley beat
to roaring, buzzing riffage and a trippy overdubbed slide-guitar
figure. Co-written by crime novelist George Pelecanos,
“Cindy, It Was Always You” resembles a lost outtake
from the Dream Syndicate’s untouchable Medicine Show, its squalling
harmonica, punishing drums, and interlocking hooks serving as a
kind of objective correlative to the narrator’s inner
stalker. According to Wynn, the goal for Tick was to sound
“louder, harder, sicker, freakier, more hopped up on
goofballs than what we had done before.” Mission accomplished:
With its stinging leads and fuzzed-out riffs, its apocalyptic
snarl and feedback crackle, Tick is all white heat and white light, jittery
psychedelia for a fractious new millennium.
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2006.
