Guided by Voices
w/My Morning Jacket
Sun June 23
Showbox, $16

Robert Pollard has fronted slanted 'n' enchanted prog-punk bubblegum merchants Guided By Voices for two decades, and writing songs, he claims, "since I was eight years old." But, he confides, "I've gotten beyond the pop stage. I'm getting a little old to be writing dumb pop songs like 'Echos Myron.'"

Die-hard GBV fans needn't worry; Unkie Bob hasn't turned his back on the rustic rock 'n' roll confections that plucked him from school-teaching obscurity in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. His band's latest album (number 13 for those who're counting), Universal Truths and Cycles, barrels gleefully through the gamut of guitar pop, from flamenco whimsy ("Zap") to queasy psychedelia ("Car Language") to slivered acoustic vignette (the winsome, lovely title track), just like all the landmark records in Pollard's bulging catalog.

But Universal is more progression than regression for Pollard, even if its fractured, homespun charm recalls the GBV of yesteryear. Gone, for example, are the elements of fairy tale that once populated Pollard's songs. His kids are all grown, he explains, and he no longer reads Grimm's tales to schoolkids by profession. "Now my inspirations come from traveling the globe, getting drunk, and listening to what people say," he smiles, looking youthful and spry despite his 44 years and a brutal hangover. "It's pretty insane and obsessive, and it probably gets on people's nerves, but I keep my notebook with me at all times. If I hear anything that catches my ear, I write it down and use it as the starting point for one of my poems."

Pollard's poem book has seen a lot of action lately, through a series of collaborative records released through his own Fading Captain imprint over the past couple of years. There's Airport 5, where Pollard adds his burr to the acidic jangles of one-time GBV guitarist Tobin Sprout; there's Go Back Snowball, with Mac McCaughan setting Pollard's vocal against synths and brash guitar ("Superchunk wanna tour with us but they only wanna do weekends," winks Pollard, "cuz they try and drink with us, and it hurts 'em!"); there's even Tropic Of Nipples, where Pollard locks antlers with hack-legend Richard Meltzer for some seriously lysergic jams ("I never had a 'drug period,'" insists the committed fan of all things psychedelic. "If I'm tired, I'll do a line of coke before going onstage; if I take a hit of pot I go hyperactive.")

"People make the music and send it to me," he explains of the collaborations, "and I sing my poems over the top. It's a real easy way for me to work--I don't even have to have any physical contact with the person! Basically, I'm a lazy guy."

But lazy guys don't release clutches of albums and EPs every year; lazy guys don't go and record more songs just as they're mixing their almost-finished album, like Pollard did with Universal. "It's weird. Every time we wrap up an album, I get this urge to write more stuff. Usually it's a couple of songs--this time it was 13!

"I'm too fast; I'd like to slow down," he says of his punishing productivity. "I can't clear my mind. It's heavy traffic in there. I only write songs three or four times a year; every now and again I'll feel this hyperactive energy, and then I'll write a bunch. I'm somewhat paranoid about writer's block, although I've never suffered from it. But I don't wanna jinx myself!" he mugs. "Every now and again something comes over me and I have to write. I stay ahead; my notebooks [taps notebook], they're full of ideas, song titles, everything."

Think of today's rock 'n' roll wunderkinds, struggling to piece together 10-track LPs in luxurious, hypermodern studios. Then think of Bob Pollard, bashing out 10 more songs as his album's on its way to the pressing plant.

But Pollard's right about the sea change in his music: Universal may be accessible, but it's certainly not a collection of "dumb pop songs." The darkness that colored last year's Isolation Drills--chronicling the breakup of Pollard's marriage--lingers, and a certain autumnal melancholy is shadowing the Fading Captain's muse.

When I ask how much longer he sees GBV continuing, Pollard grumbles, "I saw the Quadrophenia tour, Townsend playing his guitar up here [indicates chest level]. You're s'posed to have your guitar here, [at] DICK level! I don't wanna be Mick Jagger. But as long as we can play two-and-a-half-hour shows and still rock out, we'll continue. We're having too much fun to stop now."

And then he's off, doubtless to write another dozen songs (a follow-up to Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, Pollard's sublime 1999 collaboration with GBV guitarist Bob Gillard, is on the horizon). The lazy workaholic, the block-fearing writer dispatching songbooks in a blur, the craftsman of oddball anthemic rock 'n' roll with a penchant for ever bleaker lyrical twists and poetic concerns.... The singular paradox that is Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices grows sweeter all the time.