Robert Pollard - Blazing Gentlemen - VINYL LP

Blazing Gentlemen is the last Robert Pollard record. That will be released in 2013. It is also the finest Pollard-related record to come out in this or several years, aural evidence of a rock mage reinvigorated by the fact, according to the man himself, that he's Inchfinally figured out how to write a song after 55 years.Inch Which may come as a surprise even to casual fans of Pollard's thousands-strong catalog, and fair enough, Bob's certainly hip to the irony, but it's no joke. While he's explored pretty much every highway, toll road and dark alley of songcraft in his long career, including spontaneous Inchdrum contestsInch where every member of Guided By Voices would be given the opportunity to come up with a drumbeat, over which he would then improvise a spontaneous melody based on semi-random lyrics from his ever-present notebook (for example), he's never before applied one consistent approach over the course of even one record. The new technique is considerably more disciplined he first collects - in the (figuratively) selfsame notebook - phrases and titles, bits of overheard conversation, snatches of misheard movie dialogue, thus providing an assortment of lines all of which he considers strong enough to serve as potential song titles. He then assembles these song titles into lyrics, which because each line is strong enough to stand on it's own, contain neither bloat nor the least misstep. When he's happy with the lyrics, he writes a melody for each lyric. He then sits down with the guitar and figures out chords that fit the melodies. Sounds pretty straightforward, but for Pollard the result provides a structure uniquely suited to his muse. The proof is in the Inchexcellent cake, so happily done, and quick to bake,Inch as he sings (recalling to those with long memories the Inchfreedom cakeInch of Propeller's classic InchWeedkingInch) on InchTea People,Inch rep