Robert Pollard
Is Off to Business
(Guided By Voices Inc.)
It wouldn't be surprising if most casual Pollard fans (and even the diehards) on first listen might pass his new album off like the homogenous albums that came during the man's prolific, yet middlin'-to-good Merge period. One might even retitle the record "Business As Usual." But listen again—and again—and see that Bob's foray into self-employment (this is the first for his GBV Inc. label) is truly wiping the slate clean, honing his craft, and coming up with a realized work that rivals anything he's done in the past decade. Perhaps he's been privy to the grumbles of discontent claiming the man has released too much material for his own good, wearing his quasi-legendary name thin, and leaving those casuals previously noted searching the back catalog instead of moving forward. For the geeks, though, has there been an album in the 00's that stands up to the day he dissolved his bread-and-butter group?

On Off to Business Pollard's fetish with prog pomp and circumstance finally bears fruit. Before these Genesis-inspired excursions out of his comfort zone resulted in laborious bridges hastily grafted onto second-tier melodies, ultimately weighing down the songs in glut. But here, as on the lead single "Weatherman and Skin Goddess" and the fireworks finale "Wealth and Hell-Being," the synthesis of quirky movements, tangled guitar squiggles and epic riffs seems naturally spun, and subsequently rich harmonies and fist-raising anthems emerge. This is especially true with "The Blondes," an acoustic and mellotron led ballad that recalls the lilting psychedelia of classically overlooked bands like Spirit and Parachute-era Pretty Things. And when Bob's privy to shove some indulgence down the gullet—"To the Path!"—the results sound necessary; it's the rumbling beginning to the album's third act which balances Townshend-esque bombast with Peter Gabriel's quixotic lyricism and sense of adventure. The former wandering boy poet is no longer singing about the imagination so much as the intrapersonal. There's obviously a hard woman in his life, and she's geared his talk towards justifying his age, complex psychologies and absolute truths.

As if these challenging progressive suites aren't enough, Off to Business is peppered with Pollard's quick-fix, spartan-pop. "1 Years Old," "Western Centipede" and the wah-wah high gloss of "Gratification to Concrete" could easily fit into GBV's golden age (or better yet, one of his solo sides for Matador), and here add to an already strong collection of songs. Of course Todd Tobias is in tow, playing every instrument and producing, and if there's any reservation with Off to Business it lies with the milky, sameness of his sonics. Wishing for a shred of tape hiss, flubbed tracks, and some 30-second abstracts is asking for too much these days—those tricks are for (Psycho and) the birds. But that's merely nitpicking through an album that asserts Robert Pollard might in fact be taken for granted in the indie rock universe; since deciding to do a little editing he's produced what could blossom into a mid-career renaissance.
Kevin J. Elliott

mp3: "Gratification to Concrete"