Thanks to the release of a new 2-disc Tommy Keene retrospective (the unfortunately titled (but a title that Robert Pollard would surely appreciate) Tommy Keene You Hear Me), I have been listening to a lot of Keene lately. I’ve been a fan for two decades, but still, hearing a bunch of his music from across [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Crickets category.
The Power of Suck
This one seems to hint at Guided by Voices mythology, but the dates don’t add up and so it doesn’t have the historical heft that it might otherwise. Most GBV fans know that the band was working on an album called The Power of Suck in 1995, to be concept album about the band itself [...]
The Vault of Moons
After an incongruous, robotic voice asks, “Is anybody out there?” sounding like a bad FM radio bumper from the ’80s, this song gets down to business as a sort of catalog of Pollardiana. There’s the bug reference (The opening line about “the caterpillar’s destiny”), a mention of boxing (prizefighter), the title of another song in [...]
First Spill is Free
I usually associate The Takeovers with raunchy garage rock, but Chris Slusarenko has more up his sleeve than distorted power chords and ramshackle beats. “First Spill is Free” is built on a pleasant acoustic guitar figure, and Pollard creates a nice vocal melody that feels like the exact right line for the song. On past [...]
First of an Early Go-Getter
Lest anyone think Doug Gillard is only good for some monster guitar riffs and intricate solos, he drops a spooky synth- and piano-driven tune on us thanks to his collaboration with Robert Pollard as the Lifeguards. “First of an Early Go-Getter” sounds as first like it will be an instrumental. Pollard likes to give his [...]
Look at Your Life
Imagine this: Robert Pollard is in Las Vegas performing at a casino. He’s wearing some sort of monochrome pant suit. He’s holding one of those long, slim microphones in one hand, perhaps a scarf in the other. A guitar begins to play quietly, joined by a light tap on a snare drum. Then he begins [...]
Do Something Real
A song like “Do Something Real” points out two things: 1) If Robert Pollard and Co. had had the patience and resolve to see their best songs through to their best result, the band’s already strong albums of the Doug Gillard era would have been that much stronger, and 2) Pollard would do well to [...]
Time Machines
It doesn’t take this song’s inclusion on the Crickets Fading Captain series best-of to indicate that it’s one of Robert Pollard’s finest non-Guided by Voices tracks. It’s a strong enough song that it would elevate any release on which it appeared. While Pollard has released a lot of filler over the years, particularly in this [...]