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| Prefixmag |
 Starting in 2006, Robert Pollard increased his already prolific output exponentially by releasing a pair of solo albums each year. And in 2011, that streak continued with January's Space City Kicks and June's Lord of the Birdcage. It's not like he's just cranking out albums for the sake of it, either. Pollard used a brand-new approach to his lyrics in writing Lord of the Birdcage. He went back to his books of poetry and used them as the canvas for the album's 12 tracks, which include mellow ballads, power pop jams, and lush, orchestral movements....full text |
| Popmatters |
| As far as I’ve witnessed, the main criticism of Robert Pollard’s post-Guided by Voices work has been laziness. He uses old lyrics, does albums where other people write all of the music and he just sings over it, and he puts out too much music without editing himself. I find the notion of Pollard as lazy antithetical to reality. How can someone who has released four albums already this year, with another double album scheduled, be lazy? Perhaps it’s just that listeners haven’t adjusted to the clear switch in direction he made, in spirit if not style. Disbanding Guided by Voices was his idea, a career movie really; it was never one monolithic band anyway. That decision clearly represented a change in approach: a decision to not strive for that elusive commercial success any longer, an acknowledgement that he was getting too old to ever be considered the next big thing. It was a retirement of sorts, and like my parents, he seems even busier in retirement than he was in his “career”. Once you free yourself from the burden of financial success, you can do all sorts of things for fun. If Pollard’s post-GBV activities have seemed scattered, not as driven towards a particular goal, that makes sense. The surprising thing about Pollard’s 2011 albums, though, and some of his 2010 ones, is how focused they are. Space City Kicks was the most eclectic and spacey, but in a way that resembled a unified concept. Lifeguards’ Waving at the Astronauts and Mars Classroom’s The New Theory of Everything, both collaborations, were tight collections of pop-rock songs build around a central sound. Now, here’s Lord of the Birdcage. It’s more focused than the others, and most days strikes me as even better, one of the best albums he’s made since Guided by Voices. It’s a strong, melodic rock album, very much in Pollard’s usual terrain, but also less erratic, frivolous, and purposely frustrating than some of his post-GBV work has been. There are mid-tempo songs with great, bittersweet hooks that sneak up on you (“Dunce Codex”), snappy up-tempo songs with the demeanor of “hits” (“Garden Smarm”, “Ribbon of Fat”), dark and weird power sludges with hints of light breaking through (“You Can’t Challenge Forward Progress”, “Silence Before Violence”), big, epic-sounding arena-rock numbers (“Smashed Middle Finger”, “Ash Ript Telecopter”) and a couple gorgeous, brittle ballads (“The Focus (Burning)”, “In a Circle”). Pollard sings quite well, and the music is as crisp and carefully arranged as the later Guided by Voices albums....full text |
| Exystence |
| Lord of the Birdcage is the 17th full-length solo studio album released by singer-songwriter Robert Pollard. 2011 is turning out to be quite a year for Pollard. The hugely successful Guided By Voices reunion tour is doing victory laps at Pitchfork and Sasquatch festivals, a tribute album is coming out for Record Store Day (including Pollard covers by Flaming Lips, Lou Barlow, David Kilgour, James Husband, Blitzen Trapper, Thurston Moore). On Lord of the Birdcage, Pollard reverses his songwriting process, transforming a dozen previously written poems into songs. He’s never written in this fashion before, and his whimsical, surrealist lyrics take center stage. New White House Spokesman Jay Carney declared in a press conference that he’s obsessed with GBV...full text |
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