Send "Robert Pollard " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Thephoenix |
 Pollard doesn't care whether you listen to his music. The entire world could be rendered deaf and he'd still put out a half-dozen albums a year, driven by a need to express the twisted melodies and schizophasic lyrics that clutter his brain. Elephant Jokes is his fifth album just this year, and he has another one on deck in his Boston Spaceships guise.What's truly astonishing, however, is that despite the breakneck pace, the immense number of volumes, and, yes, the moderate amount of half-baked filler, Pollard still turns out some gems. He has an eerie gift for memorable melodies, and it's put to good use on this light-hearted album, which burns through 22 songs in 45 minutes. The perky guitar of "Johnny Optimist" is pure fun, a typically abstract Pollard yarn about a distorted protagonist who nevertheless "comes out on top/Like a post-car-crash Jan and Dean."...full text |
| Pitchfork |
| It's just a couple of seconds long, but the few lurching guitar strums that kick off Robert Pollard's latest, Elephant Jokes, echo throughout the whole disc. For a man whose recorded output outpaces most major manufacturers, a slapdash Robert Pollard LP of particularly dour output seems at times the rule rather than the exception, and even tacking on a little flourish to get things going means Pollard's at least thought this one through to the beginning. The same could hardly be said for this winter's turgid, tossed-off The Crawling Distance, a record as easy to shrug off as it probably was to lay down. From the get-go, Elephant Jokes sounds deliberate; a deliberate go at a punchy front-to-back rock record, one, but also an intentional return to a few of the moves that made those mid-to-late-90s Guided by Voices records (and, to a lesser extent, his fine recent work with the Boston Spaceships) such a ramshackle good time. The Crawling Distance spread 10 tracks over 36 minutes; Elephant Jokes crams 22 of 'em into just over three-quarters of an hour. Just by the numbers, that reduction is huge; since forever, all the best Pollard records have been the ones that get the most songs in, and Elephant Jokes never met an idea it couldn't swiftly abandon in 90 seconds. After a few years largely leaving the fretwork for just about anybody else, several of these songs started with Bob on guitar, with a few taking root with Pollard in an actual studio rather than mucking about at home. The pre-studio GBV records had a feeling of haphazard inception to them, like they were laid down just about anywhere the bottles could be cleared enough to set the recorder down, and in many cases they were. Bob's "I'll sing, you play" mode from the last few years has certainly stripped the music of this quality, and it's something Elephant Jokes tries to recreate....full text |
| Popmatters |
| You can say this about post-GBV Robert Pollard: he’s a man quick to satisfy urges. He entertains every musical whim that comes to him, even more shamelessly now than before. Before, he had the home base of Guided by Voices to return to once he entertained himself out on those bizarre satellites. But now, cut free from his band, he’s as prolific as he ever was, and in some ways even less predictable. But the last couple of solo efforts from Pollard—and, similarly, his work with Boston Spaceships—have hinted at his desire to get that home base back. To have some straight-up rock ‘n’ roll to return to after he’s done doing whatever it is, say, the Circus Devils do. Recent solo discs Robert Pollard is Off to Business and The Crawling Distance were fully-formed albums, cohesive statements made of driving and well-built songs. So, if you were to fall into the trap of thinking you know what’s next from Pollard, you’d think Elephant Jokes would be another of these more traditionally put together records....full text |
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