Robert Pollard
Elephant Jokes
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Label: Guided By Voices Inc.
It's been 15 years and more than a dozen solo releases--including eight in the past four calendar years--since Robert Pollard fronted Guided By Voices on their iconic indie-rock classic, Bee Thousand. Long past those wonder years and into these golden years, Pollard is still cranking out quality material as fast as his label can print it. Elephant Jokes adds to his massive catalog 22 catchy, unpretentious, rapid-fire tracks clearly from the mind of songwriter who's making music for himself and few others.
Unfiltered and light-hearted, Elephant Jokes is impressively consistent with a pace that demands attention throughout its 45 minutes. This, at least in part, owes to that fact that it seems reluctant to linger on a single idea long enough to complete it. Track lengths averaging just over two minutes leave barely enough time for a plan to be established, let alone executed. It's as if Pollard sat down and wrote 22 first-rate beginnings that he cut short before having to worry about middles or ends. That said, the nearly four minute "(All You Need) To Know" is the album's longest cut but finds no benefit as such. The laid back groove ends up overstaying its welcome by nearly two minutes.
Of course an album dubbed Elephant Jokes may not necessarily be intended for listening with an appetite for depth and ideology. What's more to the point is Pollard is at his sonic best since his first post-GBV solo effort, 2006's From a Compound Eye. He sets an early standard with the upbeat, Mellencamp-y power-popper "Johnny Optimist" and the boisterous distortion of "When a Man Walks Away." These relatively conventional beginnings give way to far stranger and outlandish leanings as the album progresses. "Pigeon Trapping" and "Perverted Eyelash" wander through psychedelia while the spaced out "Cosmic Yellow Children" channels Pollard's inner Wayne Coyne through a track that could easily be cut from The Flaming Lips' upcoming Embryonic. The variety impresses to the point of curious awe; you'll not find a pair of tracks that sound alike.
Following from the drollery of the album's title, Pollard's cryptic verse often reads like a series of inside jokes. "Don't you just like college?," he prods on "Hippsville (Where The Frisbees Fly Forever)" and you can almost see the toothy grin befitting such playful vagary. Two tracks later, Pollard's on about "Jimmy" and his "supersonic love gun." By the time you arrive at the heartfelt slice of Americana, "Desiring," it's impossible to know if you're supposed to take him seriously.
When the disjointed closer "Architectural Nightmare Man" melts into a mess of distortion and fading off-key chants, album stand-out "Stiff Me" is likely the track still rattling around between your ears. Its punchy guitar and sober lyricism anchor Elephant Jokes' clearest example of why Pollard garners automatic consideration for any best-living-songwriter checklist. "Stiff me!/ Come on stiff me!," he shouts at no one in particular, calling out the forces that be with a tongue that'd be lashing if it weren't planted so firmly in his cheek. Like the album's final sum, there's not much more to it than a seasoned veteran enjoying his craft. But if you're sifting through Pollard's near-infinite collected works for a feature-filled synopsis, Elephant Jokes is worth a few spins.
by Brady Baker