Pages tagged “robert pollard”

Prolific singer/songwriter and former Guided By Voices leader Robert Pollard will release a new album and a book showcasing his art this summer, according to his website.

Robert Pollard Is Off To Business will be released on Pollard’s own label, Guided By Voices Inc., which he launched this year with managers David Newgarden, Rich Turiel and Eric Weiss. Frequent Pollard collaborator Todd Tobias produced the work.

The release of Pollard’s new album will coincide with another release, that of the book Town of Mirrors: The Reassembled Imagery of Robert Pollard, published by Fantagraphics. The colorful coffee table book will be a retrospective look at Pollard’s collage art, lyrics and art exhibits.

Pollard’s album and book are both slated for release June 2. In the meantime, Guided By Voices Inc. releases its first record today (April 15), a three-song limited edition EP featuring the track “Weatherman and Skin Goddess” from Pollard’s upcoming album, as well as two exclusive non-album tracks. The EP is only available at RockathonRecords.com.

Related links:
RobertPollard.net
Robert Pollard on MySpace
News: Robert Pollard announces new albums, return to stage

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Despite breaking up indie-rock crusaders Guided By Voices in 2004, former frontman Robert Pollard continues to put out music at a pace that would make Ryan Adams blush. The irrepressible songwriter, who has over 900 songs registered to his name, will release two new albums simultaneously on October 9.

“I’m busier than I ever was,” Pollard, 49, says. “I’m putting out six or seven albums a year.”

Coast to Coast Carpet of Love and Standard Gargoyle Decisions, which Pollard will put out under his own name on Merge, will be complementary albums - one pop, one punk. Originally conceived as a double-album epic, Pollard and long-time cohort Todd Tobias, who wrote, performed and recorded both albums with Pollard, decided shortly after taping that the material didn’t gel as a single entity.

“We made the decision to break it down into two records, one being the pretty pop record and one being the abrasive punk record, although it’s got some pretty moments also,” Pollard says. “It’s almost like Guided By Voices; it’s the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other.”

In support of the new albums, Pollard says he’s agreed to play at least two concerts. He abandoned the stage in late 2006, canceling the last three shows of a tour and announcing the end of his gigging days. But "Uncle Bob" is not one for retirement.

“I’m off for five or six months and I’m like, ‘Damn, I just finished these two records and they rock, I want to hear how they translate to the stage,’” he says.

The shows, one at Southgate House in Cincinnati and the other at Metro in Chicago, are tentatively scheduled for late November/early December. Pollard plans on playing New York shortly after.

Along with the albums, Pollard has announced the creation of Happy Jack Rock Records Singles Club. Starting in June, the prolific songwriter will put out a 7” single from one of the two new albums, along with an unreleased b-side, each month for a year.

Still, despite the new albums, two solo records on Merge last year, his other incarnations as a member of The Takeovers and Circus Devils, as well as his Fading Captain Series of recordings, Pollard feels he actually needs to speed up.

“I’d like to put out one [album] a month,” he says. “Recently, I said, ‘Well, I’m going to take a break now and take a summer vacation,’ and then I wrote nine or ten songs the other day. So I can’t stop.”

Lately, Pollard’s creative energies go beyond music. This spring, he published the third issue of his literary magazine, Eat, which contains his own literary poems and collages. Pollard plans to exhibit his collages in New York sometime in September.

“I’ve been going nuts on collages since I heard they were doing this exhibition,” Pollard says. “My old collages were really small - three inches by four inches. But if I’m going to do an exhibit, I’m going to need bigger collages. It’s tough to get over magazine page size. It will be a lot of crap on the wall. It will be fun, we’ll have wine and all that kind of shit.”

Related links:
Merge Records
Robert Pollard Official Website
The Takeovers on MySpace

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Back in 2004—when his old band, Guided By Voices, had just finished recording what would become its swan song, Half Smiles of the Decomposed , the shamelessly prolific Robert Pollard cut an album that spun his career in a brand-new direction. He was so happy with solo release From a Compound Eye , and so tired of the baggage and expectations associated with his almost-20-year-old band, that he decided to fold GBV and head for even less-charted waters.

“I entertained the notion of coming up with another band or band name,” he says, at home in Dayton, Ohio, “but I thought at that point—when I’m 47 years old—it made more sense to just be ‘Robert Pollard,’ and do the solo career. It’s actually reinvigorated me as far as writing songs and making records. I wanted to start fresh, start a new phase, and it’s felt that way, like something’s been lifted.”

His forthcoming album, Normal Happiness , is a partnership with producer Todd Tobias, to whom Pollard—despite being a self-proclaimed “dictator”—has given “complete free rein to do whatever he wants,” which generally involves engineering, playing most of the non-guitar parts and injecting new ideas about how to present the music. Most importantly, though, Tobias has freed Pollard to concentrate on his greatest strength—excavating elf-ass-kicking, experimental pop-rock nuggets from deep inside the rickety shaft of his inner songmine.

“In the early days of Guided By Voices,” says Pollard, “I was always worried about re-creating myself [with every record], consciously trying to completely re-create the music and my image, like David Bowie did. And it’s very difficult to do that. I don’t think I’m a really good singer, and I don’t think I’m a good guitar player. I don’t consider myself a musician—but I have gotten to the point where I’m comfortable calling myself a songwriter. So that’s good enough, just to try to write songs that satisfy my soul; to try to find that one song that has the perfect combination of lyrics and melody and chord progression, that gives you that spine chill. And every once in a while it happens, so it’s an endless search for that … I’m like a poor man’s Burt Bacharach.”