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.”