Photo titled "Boy at a gate in 36, Österlånggatan street in the Old Town" by an unknown photographer, courtesy of the Swedish National Heritage Board, c. 1890
Indie-rock juggernaut Robert Pollard is back in the spotlight, and it has nothing to do with releasing a new album (he's done that four or five times every year for a long time - it's not really a banner headline at this point). He's touring with the reunited "classic" lineup of Guided By Voices, reigniting a lot of interest in his first-rate and decades-long body of work. This is a window of opportunity for him to recapture some of the old-school GBV fans with a new record of creamy pop songs, which makes Space City Kicks a surprise. It's on par with Pollard's best solo work in a lot of ways and contains close to a dozen classic songs, but it's also a confounding and deliberately weird record - some GBV fans contemplating coming "back to the fold" might balk after one listen to this record - it's unfortunate, too, because a few spins will reveal Space City Kicks' best qualities.
Space City Kicks begins with "Mr. Fantastic Must Die!", a song that rattles menacingly out of the gates like a revved-up jalopy built on pots-and-pans percussion. This is the biggest problem with the record, to be honest - Pollard's collaborator/producer Todd Tobias pulls out the Halloween sound-effect records whenever he wants to "weird up" one of Uncle Bob's less straightforward compositions. I'm used to hearing these wearying sound effects on Circus Devils records, but they pop up often enough on the first half of Space City Kicks that it seems like an intentional statement that this is a more-experimental-less-pop record. Tobias even recycles shamelessly from his "spooky sounds" repertoire, using an identical dissonant chiming sound (strumming guitar strings above the nut, probably) on both the clunky heavy-rocker "Sex She Said" and the totally weird "Children Ships". The latter song is one of Pollard's more interesting "experimental" songs here, but it's the last one that pops up in the tracklist and suffers by coming too late. There are some other gems hidden in the first half of Space City Kicks in the "creamy pop" vein I'd expected to find - "Something Strawberry" is absolutely lovely, and "One More Touch" and "I Wanna Be Your Man in the Moon" are sprightly power pop that'll get your head bobbing (even if they do suffer a little from an overly repetitious lyrical style that is an unexpected issue on this album.)
Once Tobias puts away his kooky sound effects, the second half of Space City Kicks absolutely shines with a string of songs as good as you'll find on any of Pollard's solo records. The world-weary and Kinks-esque "Tired Life" could come off as clumsy but ends up being surprisingly affecting, and "Woman to Fly" is one of the best, most focused ballads Pollard has written. Anchoring this solid half-of-an-album is "Touch Me in the Right Place at the Right Time" - like "Something Strawberry", it's all sweet double-tracked vocals and chiming guitars - pure ear candy.
Space City Kicks is a fascinating and sometimes frustrating album that seems determined to hide its best attributes, but any rock fan will find a couple choice cuts here to put into regular rotation. And, if this isn't the album that grabs the attention of curious attendees of this year's GBV reunion shows, Pollard has a couple more chances to reel them in. Next month, he releases a new record with former GBV guitarist Doug Gillard under the name Lifeguards, and March will see the release of a collaboration called Mars Classroom, made with the guys from underrated '80s indie-rockers Big Dipper.
"Touch Me in the Right Place at the Right Time" by Robert Pollard
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