August 6–13, 1998

disc quicks|rock/pop

Robert Pollard

Waved Out

(Matador)

		WAVED OUT, WORN OUT: Pollard (CENTER) with last year's GBV lineup.

For the most part, Waved Out, Bob Pollard's second solo release, is a word album—if you don't listen to the words, you'll likely miss the point. Unlike his work as centerpiece for Dayton's addictive-like-crack Guided By Voices—where all that's required of the listener is to sit back and wait for killer hooks—Pollard solo is hardly a quick fix. Other than the super-poppy rump-shaker "Subspace Biographies," there's little here to cling to. But Pollard's always been one to throw knuckleballs. The result, however, is that Waved Out is unpredictable to a fault. "Make Use," the album opener, starts off like a lo-fi also-ran, but swells into a lament on the fickle nature of rock and roll fame and fashion. It's one of those sneaky low-key slow burns like the GBV anthem "Watch Me Jumpstart."

To be sure, Pollard's devoting more than a bit of his time to pondering his own musical life-expectancy; many of the tunes reflect the insecurities of a middle-aged man in a profession of (as he sings in "Make Use") "boring young heroes." But perhaps the concerns are warranted; about half of the songs hover around the two-minute mark, a window of time into which Pollard had little trouble fitting a fully realized, whiz-bang pop tune with GBV. But here, he leaves loose ends and oblique tangents hanging, dangling. The album's closer, the wandering, atonal "Second Step Next Language," clocks in at a very un-GBV four and a half minutes. If you're listening to what he's saying, you could infer that Pollard's decided to leave the pop music to the kids. Perhaps he's tiring of pop, which is okay, but, unfortunately, that exhaustion is reflected in Waved Out.

Guided By Voices will perform with Spoon on Saturday, Aug. 8, 10:30 p.m., at the TLA, 334 South St., 922-1011.

-Brian Howard