Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun

For every "Dogwood Grains" that seems to redeem the presence of In Shop We Build Electric Chairs as something more than a clearing out of the dregs of Robert Pollard's box of tapes, there is a "Weird Rivers and Sapphire Sun," a song whose best feature is its title.

Over an out-of-tune acoustic guitar strum, Robert Pollard sings... something. Again and again. It sounds like his misguided idea of a Native American chant (something bolstered toward the end of the song when he bursts forth in his best, painful Tonto impersonation).

Look, I'm a big fan of Pollard. Far from the biggest, but I'm up there. I like to hear his music in all states, from the roughest demo to the most polished attempt at striking it rich. So, it's my fault that I keep buying Pollard releases, knowing that I am doing so only for the sake of having them. After today, I'll never consciously listen to this song again. That's OK. Every note I hear helps me to better appreciate all of the other notes.

Jimmy

Robert Pollard could rarely be thought of as mellow, but his vocal on "Jimmy" can be described no other way. Pollard seems languid, almost subdued. It works, however, on one of the standouts of Elephant Jokes, an album that has definitely grown on me.

The song has a bit of "A Salty Salute" in its DNA, that slow chugging riff on one chord anchoring things from the outset. The vocal begins with Pollard very casually chanting "all right." Pollard's laconic vocal gives this a slight psychedelic edge, though it really feels like a sprightly pop confection pressed at 45 and played at 33 1/3.

Todd Tobias does some nice things with a (still subdued) shrieking guitar line to complement Pollard's rhythm guitar, giving the song its only real deviation from what could have been a Pollard demo.

The only drawback, and I write this mostly in jest, is the image conjured by the chorus. When Pollard sings of "Jimmy," one assumes he's talking about his brother. So, when he sings, "Jimmy get your love, Jimmy get your gun, Jimmy get your love gun, supersonic love gun," well, it seems a little creepy. It works very well from a musical standpoint, but Jimmy and his love gun would seem to be Jimmy's business, not Bob's. Close family, I guess.

Letters From a Witch

Gringo turns the Circus Devils aesthetic on its head. On the band's past work, Todd Tobias (and occasionally his brother, Tim) has created music that is dark, challenging and dense. It seems to be a chore for Robert Pollard to find spots for his vocals, and while that set up has produced more than its share of happy accidents, it also has led to some incongruous melodies that don't fit very well.

With Gringo, however, the Tobias brothers have crafted songs that seem designed for vocals. There is air and space, a vein left open for Pollard. As such, the songs feel more like songs than noisy collages. It sounds great, but (and this comes from someone with a love/hate relationship with the band) it doesn't sound like the Circus Devils.

Regardless of what you call it or whether it fits, "Letters from a Witch" is a great song. The Tobiases come up with a great, slinky acoustic guitar riff and a little southwestern shuffling beat. Pollard delivers the perfect vocal, the result sounding like some sort of lost Lee Hazelwood track. It's some of the best pure singing he's done in the past couple of years, and the whole thing feels as if everyone was in the room from the first spark of inspiration until the final mixdown was completed.

Father is Good

Every song on this album that is any good at all makes me lament the choices Robert Pollard makes. Why base a recording on a lo-fi boombox cassette when you could strip that out, add a real vocal and end up with a decent track? Instead, Pollard is content to take old work, pass it off to someone else and then release the results. It's certainly easier for him, but it gives short shrift to his songs.

"Father is Good" is not a great song by any stretch, a riff rocker of the type that Pollard can likely crank out in the time it takes to play it. But it's not bad, either, and leaving it in the shape it's in on All That is Holy does it a disservice. For all intents and purposes, this is a covers album, with Todd Tobias covering Pollard. The only thing keeping it from being such is the presence of Pollard's lo-fi, unintelligible vocals and nearly inaudible acoustic guitar.

Given a better vocal, this could have joined "The Killers" on Standard Gargoyle Decisions. As it is, however, it's just a curiosity and a shadow of what could have been.

The Lodger Carried a Gun

Robert Pollard's music in the late 1980s was decidedly different from what it would be just a few years later. It was much more conventional, but still had the hallmarks we associate most with his work, hooks being most prominent among them.

He was also prolific, though he hadn't figured out how to get all of that music out to his fanbase at that point (nor, really, had he figured out how to have a fanbase). A song like "The Lodger Carried a Gun" proves the point. It's a solid song from the Devil Between My Toes/Sandbox era that sounds like it never made it past the four-track demo phase.

It begins with an acoustic guitar strum the likes of which launched a million songs by thousands of college bands. Pollard creates a nice vocal melody that offers the main hook. It stumbles a bit on the chorus, which functions here more like a bridge. Pollard's vocal is flat, and he clearly hasn't figured out the best way to drive the song forward. Had it made it past the demo stage, he likely would have fixed those issues.

As it is, however, it's still a decent track, one that offers further evidence of Pollard's early prowess.