ROBERT POLLARD (GUIDED BY VOICES) - SPACE CITY KICKS (LP)

Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices) Space City Kicks on LP

Space City Kicks is an eighteen-song compendium of Bee Thousand-sized sonic chunks that range from noisy pop to poppy noise but mostly just R-O-C-K. Except the ballads, which are melancholy in a way Dwight Twilley never was, making it a mystery why Robert Pollard posed for a recent promo picture with what is clearly Twilley's guitar (and Rod Stewart's Vans, but that makes perfect sense).

The song titles are recombinated DNA from a karaoke list of classics, much in the way the songs themselves call to mind extracts of prog, pop, psych and punk. There's one called "Something Strawberry" which is "Something" meets "Strawberry Fields"; another called "Getting Going" which is taken from "Getting in Tune" and "Going Mobile." The music itself, however, has nothing to do with the titles, which were more like an oblique strategy for spurring Pollard's songwriting.

Recorded as always (or at least, often) with the invaluable assistance of Todd Tobias at his studio in Kent, Ohio, and sequenced so that it seems like Pollard lined up all the songs at once, fired a starting pistol, and sent each of them off at top speed in a different direction, Space City Kicks is Pollard at his loosest and most free, conditions under which he very often produces his finest work.

Robert Pollard Space City Kicks Track Listing:

1.  Mr. Fantastic Must Die
2.  Space City Kicks
3.  Blowing Like a Sunset
4.  I Wanna Be Your Man in the Moon
5.  Sex She Said
6.  One More Touch
7.  Picture a Star
8.  Something Strawberry
9.  Follow a Loser
10. Children Ships
11. Stay Away
12. Gone Hoping
13. Into It
14. Tired Life
15. Touch Me in the Right Place at the Right Time
16. Woman to Fly
17. Getting Going
18. Spill the Blues