The Releases: How Do You Spell Heaven (LP—GBVi, 2017) / Just to Show You (Single—GBVi, 2017)
For the past few years I’ve been teaching a Music History course at the high school that I’ve worked at for over a decade. Last Friday, the students in that class took a quiz on the general vocabulary terms that will be regularly used throughout our semester-long study of the music of the twentieth century. One of the thirty definitions that they were asked to learn was ‘chorus’ (“a part of a song that recurs at intervals, usually following a verse”).
Had I opted to make this an auditory quiz, I could have found plenty of perfect examples of a ‘chorus’ in the catalog of Robert Pollard. During his peak year, Pollard authored dozens of these—dashing all-timers off as effortlessly as a normal person changes lanes in moderate traffic. If you’ve ever heard the songs that they appear in more than once, it’s virtually guaranteed that you can recall the melodies that accompany each of the following lyrics like the back of your hand:
“Parallel lines on a slow decline, tractor rape chain / Better yet, let’s all get wet on the tractor rape chain / Speed up, slow down, go all around in the end”
“You can never be strong / You could only be free / And I’ll never ask for the truth, but you owe that to me”
“Someone tell me why I do the things that I don’t wanna do / When you’re around me, I’m somebody else”
“I don’t know where you find your nerve / I don’t know how you choose your words / Speak the ones that suit you worst / Keep you grounded, sad, and cursed / Circle the ones that come alive / Save them for the best of Jill Hives”
Even the Guided by Voices classics in which Pollard eschewed a traditional chorus—”If We Wait,” “Shocker in Gloomtown,” or “Echoes Myron,” for a few examples—contained hooks so strong that they served as de facto choruses. If you ever came away from a peak-era GBV album not remembering specific melodic highlights, it’s not because they weren’t there; it’s just that the album was a veritable whack-a-mole of hooks, and you were positively overwhelmed by them.
But whether it was the result of a conscious decision, or the diminishment of a once-incomparable superpower, a crucial distinction seems to exist between Bob Pollard’s work in the current-lineup incarnation of Guided by Voices, and everything that came before: he just doesn’t write choruses the way that he used to. And while the signs of this development were becoming apparent during the ‘classic lineup’ reunion of 2011-2014, by the time of 2017’s How Do You Spell Heaven—GBV’s second album of that calendar year—it was becoming impossible to ignore.
On its surface, Heaven is a sharp, confident record. The still-newly-minted lineup sounds fully capable of grinding a busload of lesser rock bands into a mound of sawdust. And even if they weren’t contributing their own material—as had been the case on that year’s August by Cake—the stamp of each member can be well-identified throughout the fifteen songs of Heaven.
But Bob Pollard, who graces the cover all by his lonesome—for the first-and-only time in GBV history—seems almost shockingly non-committal here. In my four listens to Heaven this week, I decided to count the number of times in which Pollard definitively repeats a chorus (melody and lyrics) across the album. While I admittedly may have missed one or two due to distraction, the mid-album “Diver Dan” was the only track that I could confidently say did so.
And I don’t know about you, but that approach feels a bit counterintuitive to me. It’s like Picasso deciding to give it a go as an architect: you’d probably recognize the outcome of this new venture as his work; but you’d also find yourself wondering why he didn’t just stick to the one thing that he does better than virtually all of his contemporaries.
And what ends up taking the place of the traditional chorus in these songs is a comparatively meandering approach to songwriting. The cynic in me might argue that Pollard didn’t find many ideas worth repeating while writing these tracks. The optimist would say that he was merely indulging the prog rock impulses that can be traced back to his earliest work, and that even make themselves known in his masterpieces; granted, the cynic would counter that a song like “Portable Men’s Society” also has a kick ass chorus on top of its proggy exterior.
But this is where we find ourselves, thirty-six weeks into The GBV Project, and over thirty years into Guided by Voices’ existence. Uncle Bob apparently had no interest in cranking out ninety-second masterpieces like “Closer You Are” or “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” for the remainder of his career. And, even if he wanted to, was it reasonable to expect him to do so as he was approaching the ripe old age of sixty? Surely a great artist has every right to evolve, and—when the time calls for it—to mature.
Besides, the best material on How Do You Spell Heaven shows that Pollard still had plenty of fire left in his belly. And what we ultimately end up with here is an album that charms in spurts, and never sinks to the level of pointlessness or embarrassment. I’d have a bit of trouble believing that it was any fan’s favorite GBV album; but I’d also find it hard to fathom that it was any of their least favorite either.
Settle in, because these guys aren’t going away any time soon. And—as best as I can recall—this is kind of what they do from here on out.
Rating: How Do You Spell Heaven (7.0) / Just to Show You (★★★1/2)
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale.
Bob-ism of the Week: “Mother terrarium / Captain delirium / Maximum high kick / Quoting the sidekick” (“Boy W”)
Next Week: GBV release what is widely considered to be the best album from the current iteration.
