Artist:
Robert Pollard
Album: Silverfish Trivia
Released: April 24, 2007
Label: Prom Is Coming
Verdict: Song of the year so far
Since disbanding the immortal Guided by Voices three
years ago, the notoriously prolific Robert Pollard has
averaged two releases per year — one a full-fledged LP,
the other usually a shorter EP’s worth of odds and ends
to tide us loony fans over. And loony we are: Pollard
has been the best pure songwriter in the business for
going on a generation now, and I regard his every
musical utterance as another excuse to shout from the
rooftops about just what class of brilliance and mastery
the world at large has been missing out on all this
time.
Such adulation is easy. Silverfish Trivia is so
much more than a stopgap EP; leagues beyond even your
typical 22-minute stream of Pollard pseudoconsciousness.
Its seven sublime tracks are part of an undeniable
dialectic whole, bookended by two overture/underture
string pieces (“Come Outside” and “Speak in Many
Colors”) that, along with two other string interludes,
give the record an epic and unforced orchestral feel.
This symphonic motif winds through the major tunes as
well, particularly on the keyboard-inflected “Touched to
Be Sure” and the shimmering and unforgettable “Circle
Saw Boys Club,” which (yet again!) garners Pollard my
vote for Song of the Year so far. Silverfish Trivia
also features his longest tune to date as far as I know,
the evocative eight-minute yellow-brick-road opus “Cats
Love a Parade” — marking quite a departure for a guy
heretofore known to forgo orthodox song structures
entirely. My lone complaint is the obvious one: namely,
that at 22 minutes the aural pleasure is over and done
with much too soon.
Artist:
Poster Children
Album: Junior Citizen
Released: 1995
Label: Sire
Verdict: Violence with guitars
What if the gaudiest, roaringest, most muscular guitar
record of the post-grunge era was released, and nobody
heard a thing? Upon first listen the Poster Children’s
fifth LP plays like a send-up of the very styles it apes
so successfully, throwing every textbook hard-rocking
convention up on the wall and out of the speakers to
pound their jaded audience’s eardrums into submission.
But camouflaged amidst all the wild power chords and
spaced-out lyrics lies a refreshing, barely polished
masterpiece of unassuming high school angst, one utterly
without pretense or shallow affectation.
Perhaps this sonic hit-and-run epic’s most impressive
quality is just how well its cartoonish sagas of love
and mayhem have held up over the past meandering decade
of music. There’s an irrepressible runaway petulance to
Junior Citizen’s 11 parodic tracks, like
garish late-night anime on steroids; yet the record is
also supremely focused, both by the tune and in
aggregate, in a manner well-nigh defunct this side of
Nothing Left to Lose-era Foo Fighters. (Compare
Citizen to the Smashing Pumpkins’ latest plodding
exercise in self-indulgence, and you’ll see what I
mean.) Rumor has it the tongue-in-cheek idolatrous gem
“He’s My Star” was written for Baywatch star
David Hasselhoff (!), but such playful devotion hardly
detracts from a bristling, cleansing refrain like
“Summer’s here and the coast is clear.... The ocean’s
not as calm as it appears.” Other standouts abound, but
for sheer sky-scraping catharsis one need only hear the
last two-and-a-half explosive minutes of “Drug I Need”
to realize there ain’t nobody making music like this
anymore, or perhaps even trying.
Marc Stephens is a Web consultant by day, writer by
night. Comments? E-mail
letters@miamisunpost.com.
