{"id":7777,"date":"2017-04-16T13:39:41","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T17:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7777"},"modified":"2017-04-18T21:59:53","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T01:59:53","slug":"on-robert-pollard-august-by-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=7777","title":{"rendered":"On Robert Pollard: August by Cake"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

[No. 03 in a Series<\/a>]<\/p>\n

A circus barker’s come-on. A brassy fanfare. The curtain rises, and\u00a0the show\u00a0begins\u00a0with “5\u00b0 on the Inside<\/a>,” a thumping, rubber-jointed rocker that sounds utterly joyous, at least until the lyrics hit you.<\/p>\n

The sweet spot bled out
\nto\u00a0stain your\u00a0life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

August by Cake<\/em><\/a> is the most approachable\u00a0Guided by Voices record since 2001’s Isolation Drills<\/em>,\u00a0the most relaxed since 1995’s Alien Lanes<\/em>, and the most topical ever. Robert Pollard once divided humanity into two camps: Sad Clowns and Happy Motherfuckers. He was, he confessed, in the former category, but\u00a0he envied those in\u00a0the latter. August by Cake<\/em> is a Happy Motherfucker record, but it’s shot through with a\u00a0Sad Clown sensibility.<\/p>\n

The release is\u00a0being promoted as Pollard’s 100th studio record,\u00a0a claim I’m not inclined to fact-check, but what really sets it apart\u00a0is that it’s GBV’s first double album. Its\u00a032\u00a0songs\u00a0are parceled out evenly across the two disks, eight a side, and all that sonic real estate gives the album\u00a0an unhurried quality, and an expansiveness, that’s unusual in the GBV catalog. The extended format\u00a0also gives\u00a0Pollard an excuse to share songwriting and singing duties with\u00a0the four other current members of the band \u2014 drummer Kevin March, bassist Mark Shue, and guitar players Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. Each of them contributes two\u00a0songs,\u00a0with\u00a0Shue also supplying\u00a0a magnificently grimy instrumental called “Chew the Sand.” While Pollard’s erstwhile collaborator Tobin Sprout was always allowed a few songs on Guided by Voices\u00a0albums when he was a member, August by Cake<\/em> is by far the most democratic of the band’s records.<\/p>\n

What’s remarkable, particularly given that Pollard reportedly<\/a> gave his bandmates only a day or two to come up with\u00a0their tracks, is how uniformly good all their songs are. They include some of the album’s standouts, notably\u00a0March’s jingle-jangle earworm “Overloaded<\/a>” and\u00a0Shue’s thunderous\u00a0“Sudden Fiction.” Even more surprising, they also include\u00a0the two songs that sound the most like classic GBV numbers. Bare’s offhand “High Five Hall of Famers,” a tribute to the current lineup, would have fit right in on King Shit and the Golden Boys<\/em>, and March’s “Sentimental Wars” has the brittle sweetness of a Sprout tune.<\/p>\n

Still, it’s Pollard’s band and Pollard’s record. His 23 songs\u00a0are varied and surprising, packing subtle chord and melody changes into their two-minute spans. If you’re looking for punky thrills like “Motor Away” or “Planet Score,” you’re not going to find them on this record. Pollard’s work here is more in a post-punk vein, catchy but aloof, open yet\u00a0wary.\u00a0Some of the best of his songs are the slow-burners, the ones\u00a0that would be anthemic if they weren’t so undeceived. There’s\u00a0the poised\u00a0“What Begins on New Year’s Day,” the melancholic “Warm Up to Religion,” the tender “Amusement Park Is Over,”\u00a0and, best of all, the stark, unsettling “We Liken the Sun.”<\/p>\n

Arriving\u00a0in the middle of\u00a0the first side, “We Liken the Sun” takes a\u00a0place among Pollard’s most striking\u00a0compositions. In typically\u00a0abstract-expressionist fashion, Pollard offers a meditation on metaphor against a backdrop\u00a0of sullen, viperish\u00a0guitars. He begins by portraying\u00a0the sun as a symbol of life and inspiration \u2014 “the wheel of hands, a lasting thing” \u2014 but halfway through, the music deepens, enters a harsher\u00a0climate,\u00a0and\u00a0the metaphor\u00a0darkens. The\u00a0song ends with\u00a0an eerily\u00a0apocalyptic refrain,\u00a0the life-giving force transformed\u00a0into a\u00a0dealer of death:<\/p>\n

Burn your face
\nwith your gun,
\nlight your head,
\nliken the sun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pollard, as an artist, is a formalist, and that’s true not only of his songs<\/a> but of his albums. He takes a dramatist’s\u00a0interest in the sequencing and segueing of tracks, and in the way the two sides of a vinyl record constitute different acts and can express\u00a0different moods. That’s exactly what makes a double album such a\u00a0tricky undertaking. Not only do you have to hold the listener’s interest for an unusually long time, but you have to work through four acts instead of just two.\u00a0For most bands that have had the temerity to attempt one, the double album has represented a triumph of ambition over talent.<\/p>\n

Wisely, Pollard keeps things simple. He steers clear\u00a0of pretentiousness, keeps the songs in the foreground. (The model would seem to be the Beatles’ White Album, a record Pollard worships.) But there is a\u00a0carefully worked out\u00a0architecture to August by Cake<\/em>, and it gives the album a heft and coherency that it wouldn’t have if it were just a big collection of songs.<\/p>\n

The first side begins\u00a0as\u00a0something of an overture, giving a sense of the album’s many styles and themes. Then, starting\u00a0with “Liken the Sun,” it turns\u00a0ominous. One of the\u00a0crucial tracks on any double album is the last song of the first side\u00a0\u2014 it’s where the Stones put “Tumbling Dice” on Exile on Main Street<\/em> \u2014 and Pollard picks for that spot the coldest, most abrasive\u00a0song on the album: “Packing the Dead Zone.” It seems a strange choice at first, but the song\u00a0brings to the surface an\u00a0undercurrent of foreboding that runs throughout August by Cake<\/em>. The album arrives\u00a0in\u00a0a world that gives every appearance of coming apart at its poorly sewn seams, and\u00a0Pollard produces\u00a0a bill of indictment\u00a0that captures the absurdity of the times:<\/p>\n

Music in boxes,
\nnail heads,
\nhat companies,
\nwell-worn fools,
\na room full of dolls,
\nidol hands,
\nconfident knives,
\npsychopath timecard,
\nphilosophical zombies,
\ngymnasium rats,
\nnegative twitters,
\nEarth politicians
\nand ozone sneakers:
\npacking the dead zone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mood brightens\u00a0on Side B, where the band indulges its garage-rock and glam-rock leanings. With nods to forerunners ranging from the Kinks to T Rex to Wire, not to mention\u00a01990s-era GBV, the side is where this new version of Guided by Voices establishes its own identity, as a band able to work within a rich tradition without feeling constrained by it. It’s the most self-contained and confident of the sides, and it\u00a0ends giddily, with the group charging\u00a0through three of the album’s most upbeat, straightforward rock\u00a0songs.<\/p>\n

The third side is a different beast. It begins with the same riff that closes the second, but it heads in a contrary\u00a0direction, inspired by\u00a0Pollard’s fascination with\u00a0prog and psychedelia. The most experimental, and the darkest, of the sides, it feels at times like a playlist for a road trip through dystopia. We’re back in the dead zone. In addition to Shue’s “Chew the Sand,” there’s Pollard’s creepy sci-fi mini-opera “Substitute 11,” Gillard’s piercing Silicon Valley kiss-off “Deflect\/Project” (“evil things have come to light”), and Bare’s surreal, despairing “Upon the Circus Bus”:<\/p>\n

And as we abandon all those who defended us
\nwe all know what is waiting for us
\non the circus bus, upon the circus bus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Diehard fans will appreciate the jarring “amp drop” that Bare slips in near the close of the song\u00a0\u2014 a winking tribute to a GBV tradition\u00a0and\u00a0a fitting exclamation point for Side C.<\/p>\n

The final side strikes me as the least cohesive of the four\u00a0\u2014\u00a0less a summing up than a sweeping up. But maybe that’s by design: a set of tunes\u00a0to usher the crowd out of the tent and into the night. The album slows with a couple of\u00a0ramshackle Pollard-alone-with-his-guitar songs (“Whole Tomatoes,” “Golden Doors”),\u00a0but then\u00a0closes\u00a0with its most propulsive, exuberant number, “Escape to Phoenix.”<\/p>\n

Grand destinies,
\nnew hot topics,
\nthe escape scene.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pollard is\u00a0the circus barker again, making a sprint for\u00a0the town\u00a0line, propelled\u00a0by\u00a0hand claps\u00a0and chugging guitars.\u00a0The tune\u00a0feels like the missing link between the Velvet Underground and the Bay City Rollers. I’m not sure it was a link that needed to be discovered, but it does end this fun and satisfying album with a rush.<\/p>\n

Watching eternity,
\nthe people demand an answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They’re not going to get one, but, for the\u00a0moment anyway, the Happy Motherfuckers are outrunning\u00a0the Sad Clowns.<\/p>\n

Image: Detail from “All the Way to Happy<\/a>” by Robert Pollard.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[No. 03 in a Series] A circus barker’s come-on. A brassy fanfare. The curtain rises, and\u00a0the show\u00a0begins\u00a0with “5\u00b0 on the Inside,” a thumping, rubber-jointed rocker that sounds utterly joyous, at least until the lyrics hit you. The sweet spot bled out to\u00a0stain your\u00a0life. August by Cake is the most approachable\u00a0Guided by Voices record since 2001’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-robert-pollard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7777"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7830,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7777\/revisions\/7830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}