Robert Pollard - Elephant Jokes

“I’m sick and tired of all you backward-looking crybabies. You know who you are: ‘If only it were 1994...’ 1994? Were you even alive then? How alive? “Not as alive as Robert Pollard is right now—working the boards, finding the words still jump when he says jump and the guitar chimes when he forms the chords on the six-string with his honest-to-God DIY, home-made calluses. A clutch of these songs started out live in the studio, with Mr. Pollard on guitar, and they buzz with the charge of on-the-spot generation. All the secret ingredients go into the mix— even Mr. P’s brother, the estimable outside shooter Jimmy Pollard, returns to tweak a few knobs—and the result is music that comes alive with that sui generis Dayton grit and sparkle. Check out the needling, obsessive riff on the intro to “When a Man Walks Away”— no mistaking the Pollard touch there—or the distortiondrenched start of “Epic Heads” where one can just about smell the heat rise from the solid state circuit board. “You want nostalgia? OK, here’s some nostalgia. Think music as real and unselfconscious as anything since Same Place the Fly Got Smashed or songs alive with Alien Lanes’ aesthetic but even hookier and smarter. Music that sounds just like friends playing for the fun of it in the family basement (so the family’s grown up and moved away, it’s a different house, and it’s not exactly a basement anyway, but I defy one to hear the difference).” —Marc Woodworth, author, Bee Thousand
(33 1/3 Press)

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