[rating=6.00]
Unbeknownst to me, Guided by Voices, Robert Pollard’s revolving member and ragtag band of merrymakers, released their hi-fi masterpieces, Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills, on vinyl for Record Store Day 2015. By reflex alone, I scooped up both LPs. Price was not a concern, neither was format. I own multiple copies of the albums, but there was a powerful instinct within me to have both albums on vinyl for no specific reason, other than it bore the name Guided by Voices. Such is my devotion and the devotion of Pollard’s army; we are willing to shell out time and money for almost anything Pollard attaches his name to.
We’ve done so with diminishing returns, as of late. Pollard’s return to the “classic lineup” of Guided by Voices produced the highest ratio of bang to buck. Previous to that run it was, as it has always been, hit and miss with Sir Bob. But, Pollard, in all his white-haired, aged glory, can’t keep us at bay for long and he returns to the well of inspired pop/rock on Faulty Superheroes, his second release of 2015 and first under his own name.
Album opener, “What a Man,” is a punch-up of guitar fuzz and edible pop formula. At 3:30, it’s the longest song on the album with it’s slow fade-in and jumpy bassline intro. But if there’s one thing Pollard knows how to achieve, it’s how to land a hook within mere seconds of a verse. Choruses bleed into verses with the same imaginative clarity, but when Pollard does push a chorus on us, as on “Cafe Elimination” and “You Only Need One,” it’s delivered with a gift-wrapped melody. Pollard was born in the wrong era; he should have been a songwriter for hire, penning tracks for 60s rock groups or 80s college radio wannabes.
Speaking of college radio, Faulty Superheroes owes more than a small debt to college radio staples R.E.M., Let’s Active, and Teenage Fanclub. Guitar chords are picked and ringing (“Faster the Great”), driven by their own bass-lined oddities (“Mozart’s Throne”), and melancholic in their faux balladry (“Up and Up and Up”). And just like the trendsetting pop stars of the 70s and 80s, the album takes it title from the best track on the LP. “Faulty Superheroes” is the jewel in the crown, a homage to the title characters of comic books who never display their flaws, but parade about impervious to mortality: “warped and weird/ they get speared/ then the game is over,” Pollard tells us. He isn’t the Superman-type, it appears. He prefers his heroes terrible and true, mortal even.
But Faulty Superheroes isn’t all fistfuls of admiration. For all of its immediate charm and instant accessibility, the album doesn’t linger as much as it dissipates. Returning to listen to it isn’t always a top choice; Faulty Superheroes won’t make the top of your iTunes’ “Top 25 Most Played” list, but it will deliver a 30-minute shot in the arm, a sugar rush that Pollard executes with the skill of a drunken surgeon. One day, there will be no more output from our favorite Ohioian son, but that day is not today. Faulty Superheroes, is what he’s given us in the ever-glorious present: listen and enjoy.
2 Responses
Robert Pollard is in same artistic class as Hemingway, Picasso, and Cash. He’s already achieved as much great work as each of them, and he might have to die before the world knows it.
But generally a good review. Big Salutes.
‘Diminishing returns, of late” is incorrect. He has been amazingly consistent on his latest releases. “Blazing Gentlemen” and “Honky Tonk” were solid releases. Recent GBV is good to great. “Faulty Superheroes” is the best of the lot. ” I Sell The Circus” was the only slight dissappointment ’cause it’s a little straightforward “arena rock” and no weirdness.