The shameful, necessary task of catching up on my stack of 2009 Robert Pollard-associated record releases continues. Per Townsman Kpdexter‘s instructions my controls are set for Boston Spaceships‘ debut album, Brown Submarine.
Boston Spaceships, “Psyche Threat”
When news of this album first hit I was surprised that Pollard was starting a new band. After all, hadn’t he released 203 albums with Guided By Voices and another 144, since the waning days of GBV, as a solo artist? Why not continue on the solo route, I thought. If he was going to have a new band I was hoping it would be a full-blown prog-rock affair, a launching point from one aspect of his large body of work that would allow him to fully explore that side of his songwriting. Someone interesting needs to don the dashiki and tackle that beast before too long.
As it turns out, Boston Spaceships would present a streamlined take on a lot of what I liked best about GBV: the forearm-pumping rock anthems with a touch of Who Sell-Out-inspired psychedelia. A track entitled “Psyche Threat” particularly satisfies Pollard’s interest in that aspect of The Who’s sound with fast-moving chord intervals and a hint of what sounds like one of John Entwistle’s french horn parts. Quick-strummed, Diddley-esque acoustic guitar rhythms propel “Ate It Twice,” wrapping up with a little Yardbirds-style rave-up. As on the band’s later 2009 release, The Planets Are Blasted, drummer John Moen keeps spry, focused rhythms. In some ways this makes Pollard’s music sound more “normal,” but considering that he seems like he’s been trying to make a form of Classic Rock since the last few GBV albums, if not earlier, why shouldn’t the rhythms gel more consistently than they used to?
Boston Spaceships, “You Satisfy Me”
Another thing that strikes me about these Boston Spaceships albums is that Pollard’s voice doesn’t sound as if it’s running through a Radio Shack mic and cheap, ’80s digital delay, as I grew accustomed to hearing it on countless GBV releases and his first couple of solo records. Pollard doesn’t couch his voice in any new aural dressing, but his voice projects just fine without it on a poppy, straightforward song like “You Satisfy Me.” What I’d really like to hear one of these days, on one of these more-focused Pollard releases, is a lead guitar player (or other musician) who can dig in and “create his own shot,” to use a basketball analogy. The lack of a soloist is not missed on a Buzzcocks/Beulah tune like “Ready to Pop,” and Mick Ronsons aren’t falling off trees, but with all the power chording Pollard favors in his music I’d like to hear someone in his band grab the fretboard and go for the gusto more often. The album-closing “Go for the Exit,” for instance, hints at a steppin’-out guitar solo, but it’s buried. The rhythms are there, Bob, now let it rock!
