Robert Pollard - Normal Happiness

Genre rock Publisher Merge Records External Links Official Robert Pollard Website Official Merge Records Website

If, like this writer, Normal Happiness is your re-entry point into the ouvere of Ohio's Robert Pollard after a protracted (four year) sabbatical, the first reaction may be one of disappointment - in the former Guided By Voices frontman/songwriter and in yourself. This upteenth batch of undistinguished if well-produced, characteristicly Pollard rockers - sixteen songs in 30 minutes - hardly seems to merit much, if any, enthusiasm. Early listening isn't really listening at all; it's mostly spent wondering whether one was snookered 10-12 years back by the Pollard legend and the shambling condition early records like Waved Out and Alien Lanes arrived in. How much of our affection was colored by the fact that Pollard was an elementary school teacher whose wannabe rock-star career was on the rocks for years, an ambitious hobby that seemed to be going nowhere fast when Bee Thousand caught the right ears in 1994 - or the fact that until 1997 or so, his rickety tunes and Dada-ish storybook proclamations sounded as though they were recorded inside a half-full bottle of Drano by a paperboy ordered to press "play" and "pause" and "stop" on a Radio Shack cassette player when so ordered? Somewhere along the line, Guided By Voices became Pollards's job job, the band's album budgets increased, the arrangements were trimmed and hemmed, and despite our protagonist's enduring knack for knocking out rudimentary, charming rock crystals, something precious and irreplacable was lost.

Catchy as a crochet needle ensnared in a woolen autumn sweater, "Rhoda Rhoda" is an early standout on Normal Happiness - the melody emminently hummable, the chasing guitars winning and relentless. The remainder doesn't live up to it, but beneath those patently ridiculous titles lie plenty of nicely mangy stummers like "Top Of My Game" and "Tomorrow Will Not Be Another Day" and slightly warped song studies like "Get a Faceful." He could, and probably will, do this forever to ever-diminishing returns; a reassuring thought, somehow, even though I don't plan to check back in on the guy for another couple years.