Pitchfork Reviews 6/10/08

Robert Pollard
Robert Pollard Is Off to Business
[Guided By Voices, Inc.; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.9.

I was never a huge huge megafan like a lot of people, so I might be wrong about this, but wasn't the deal with Guided By Voices that they were pop songcrafters par excellence who nonetheless buried their songs in lo-fi noise, goofed off with insane meaningless Captain Beefheart lyrics ("Kicker of Elves"?), and truncated their songs so short that none of the potential hooks actually got repeated? And the effect was of gleeful subversion, like "we're so good we don't actually have to be good to be great"? Is that accurate criticspeak for what we're dealing with here? Oh, and also isn't Robert Pollard the drinkinest son of a bitch on the face of the planet even though he's in like his 50's by now?

Well, I've heard some bad things about his post-Guided By Voices solo stuff so I was reluctant to check any of it out. Well, ok. It turns out he's following the basic same artistic trajectory as Paul Westerberg. Casual unserious genius followed by a gradual "take me seriously now" jettisoning of the old shitfaced and snotty ironic distancing techniques (or maybe, rather, augmenting/hardening them into serious pre-conceived "this is my art" techniques). The process threatens to plunge the whole enterprise into a blissful adult contemporary mediocrity, but what is he supposed to do, not age? At least he's got enough cred in the bank for it, and Bob Pollard's version of mediocrity is still better than most to the tune of this being a pretty great record, and anyway mediocre doesn't mean bad. It means better than bad.

Also, if the tales of his alcohol intake are anywhere near accurate on a habitual basis, we should all hope this serious songwriter direction at least gets him enough cash to buy a new liver. Organ failure is no way to die. He deserves more comfort than that. Maybe that's what he's shooting for, I mean there's a man-sized clue right there in the title. So ok, he had a long, productive noise rock career and now in his emeritus years he gets to settle into more plush venues, maybe weeklong solo acoustic engagements at the Knitting Factory Los Angeles for beaucoup dollars, that kind of thing. I can think of plenty of people on that road who deserve it less.


Supergrass
Diamond Hoo Ha
[Astralwerks; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.2.

Remember that one minute like six months ago when Jennifer Love Hewitt said something about "vagazzling?" Total publicity stunt to get the entire internet talking about her cooch: it worked and then it didn't of course, because how long are we supposed to be captivated by Hewitt's cooch, anyway? It's just a cooch. You've seen one, you get the basic idea. Plus: it was a pretty transparent stab at viral me-marketing cooked up by some publicist somewhere.

I remember at the time I looked up vagazzling, safesearch: off, and could not find one internet picture of a vagazzled cooch. And I have a rule about viral publicity campaigns that says if there's some supposed phenomenon that involves cooches, and you can't even find an internet picture of a cooch that's participated in this phenomenon, that means that the cooch phenomenon under discussion is bullshit.

But it's mildly real now, the pictures are up, though nothing as salacious as I had hoped. It's basically rhinestones where your bush should be, for people who's hip-huggers, thong, and tramp stamp-based aesthetic reasoning permits them to think that such a thing is "cute" instead of "a fingerpoke in the eye of God." I hesitate to use the word "slut" here, because I think of these women as being sexually empowered but just dumb and tasteless. "Trashy" works best.

This album reminded me to re-look at the vagazzling phenomenon. I couldn't wrap my brain around it before seeing the pictures. For some reason I was imagining jewel-like decorations adorning the outermost labia, framing the vulva, so that if your were to penetrate a vagazzled cooch it would be visually similar to fucking a disco ball. The possible appeal of which didn't make any sense to me. But I understand now. It was the name that threw me. It's really pubazzling. And it's just as dumb but more inane than what I was previously thinking about. I'm kind of disappointed.

Also: is there a sadder human being than Kathy Whatsherfaceunfunnyredhead?

Supergrass are enjoyable as a one or two singles per album mainstream rock band, and the rest sounds like vaguely European rock for a soccer video game. That is my opinion about Supergrass.


Shy Child
Noise Won't Stop
[Kill Rock Stars / Wall of Sound; 2007/2008]

Pitchfork gave it an 8.0.

Watch/listen to this and then look me in the eye and tell me you find it anything but annoying. If you don't have the energy or time to click and investigate, I'll summarize: this is the keytar and drums duo dancepunk band, and no, they're not "ha ha ha awesome lol."


Thomas Brinkmann
When Horses Die
[Max Ernst; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 7.4.

There are very few ways to get me to enjoy techno. One of them is "be so pretentious and intense and German that I can't help but laugh, and then I'll be willing to listen to what you have to say for a little while before I get bored and stop." Other ways include: I am 14 and I think I might see a boob while I'm here so I'm in it to win it; giving me free drugs plus sounding dubby as fuck and not expecting me to dance; and being a fake-tanned guido blasting horrible disco diva techno out of your customized-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life Mitsubishi and making a tough guy face like you're the awesomest dude on the planet.

None of these methods actually work for longer than a minute, although both the free drugs method and the being 14 method will generally make me sedentary, so I'll at least have to sit through whatever it is you're doing. This guy is using the German method. I sat through a whole song, even.


Ex Reverie
The Door Into Summer
[Language of Stone; 2008]

Pitchfork gave it a 6.6.

Pitchfork basically calls this constipated nerd music, and I agree.

Pitchfork didn't say that exactly, but I did.