{"id":7545,"date":"2017-01-12T12:43:07","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T17:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7545"},"modified":"2017-04-15T22:46:39","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T02:46:39","slug":"on-robert-pollard-my-zodiac-companion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7545","title":{"rendered":"On Robert Pollard: “My Zodiac Companion”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[No. 01 in a Series<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Please Be Honest<\/em>, the latest Guided By Voices record, opens with a dirge<\/a>. Over spare, unsteady acoustic-guitar chords, Robert Pollard slurs an ode to the otherworld:<\/p>\n

Orbital ghosts
\nattract sparks,
\naftermath heavens.
\nThe unborn called:
\nthey miss you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The verse ends, but despite a slight quickening of the guitar line the song, called \u201cMy Zodiac Companion,\u201d can\u2019t muster the energy to drag\u00a0itself out of its minor-chord funk. No chorus arrives, no lift. The song seems fated, like so many other Guided By Voices songs before it, to collapse in on itself. Entropy echoes\u00a0through the lyrics of the second verse:<\/p>\n

The stones are dead,
\nthe different fathers.
\nThe vulgar souls,
\nequal in torture,
\nfly torn apart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We\u2019re among damaged spirits, beings coming undone, a patrimony in cosmic disarray. It\u2019s as if the fate even of angels is to be ripped to pieces in time\u2019s whirlwind. \u201cWe are stardust,\u201d sang Joni Mitchell in \u201cWoodstock,\u201d her loopy 1970 mash note to a hippie Eden, and the opening of \u201cMy Zodiac Companion\u201d feels\u00a0like Pollard\u2019s belated, despairing rebuttal. Dust is dust, whatever its origin, and to be fashioned of it is a horror.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe stones are dead.\u201d But also: \u201cThe Stones are dead.\u201d (The submerged allusions to the Rolling Stones in the first verse \u2014 \u201caftermath,\u201d \u201cmiss you\u201d \u2014 rise\u00a0to the surface\u00a0at the start of\u00a0the second.)\u00a0Pollard is often thought of as a primitivist, an avatar of lo-fi, but he\u2019s the opposite of that, really: a formalist. His\u00a0formalism is not the comforting formalism\u00a0of the traditionalist but the anxious formalism\u00a0of the modernist. His challenge as an artist\u00a0is to take classical forms\u00a0(in Pollard’s case, the song and album forms created by rock bands \u2014 “the different fathers” \u2014\u00a0during\u00a0the second half of the 1960s), dismantle them, and remake them into new things that\u00a0fulfill\u00a0his own aesthetic and emotional intentions. He follows Ezra Pound’s command: “Renovate, dod gast you, renovate!” The terrible question that runs through “My Zodiac Companion,” and all of Please Be Honest<\/em>, is whether renovation is still possible.<\/p>\n

An electric guitar enters the mix, shimmering with distortion. There’s a clatter of pots-and-pans drumming. The song swells, tentatively, toward a chorus. \u201cCome back to me,\u201d Pollard calls out into the chaos, \u201cmy zodiac companion.\u201d There’s no reply. The\u00a0muse remains\u00a0silent.<\/p>\n

The chorus deflates, and the drunk\u00a0returns with his loosely fingered acoustic. The clock spins backward. We\u2019re among children in a nursery, the\u00a0antechamber of youth, awaiting a sign, harboring a \u201cnebulous wish.\u201d The kids in their innocence play adult games \u2014 of war, of chance, of marriage, of faith:<\/p>\n

Umbrella swords
\nwith which we play-fight,
\nsixes and sevens,
\nsaucers and cups \u2014
\nfor Magdalene.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s clear by now that Pollard is leading\u00a0us on a quest, guiding\u00a0us in the direction of some clarifying origin, some\u00a0source. The path we’re on is similar to the\u00a0one\u00a0Robert Frost took in his great poem \u201cDirective\u201d:<\/p>\n

First there\u2019s the children\u2019s house of make believe,
\nSome shattered dishes underneath a pine,
\nThe playthings in the playhouse of the children.
\nWeep for what little things could make them glad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s a quest \u2014 in search of the as yet unbroken home \u2014 that runs through much of Pollard\u2019s work. It was there, desperately\u00a0so, in one of the most famous of his songs, \u201cGame of Pricks\u201d:<\/p>\n

I climb up on the house,
\nweep to water the trees,
\nand when you come calling me down
\nI put on my disease.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Among the playthings in the playhouse of the children\u00a0\u2014 the saucers and cups, the guitars and drums \u2014\u00a0Pollard finds what he\u2019s after. The random stars come together\u00a0into\u00a0patterns, coalesce into zodiacal\u00a0signs. The tentative chords turn into power chords. The song delivers its hook, becomes a swirling, sad anthem. Pollard\u00a0is on stage, looking out over an acre of pumping fists. He is more than an orbital ghost. He is, as his fathers were, a star.<\/p>\n

After two minutes and twelve seconds, \u201cMy Zodiac Companion\u201d reaches its terminal chord. The dust is universal, and the song, as long as it lasts, is the only shield.<\/p>\n