Look, I know you're thinking about buying that new Airport 5 record. You saw it at the record store the other day and it has that glossy sticker on the front: "Airport 5 is Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout." The packaging even looks pretty cool-- it's got that distressed typewriter font like on the Under the Bushes-era singles, and that enigmatic Jason Pierce-style collage on the cover.
But I hope that doesn't mean you're assuming it sounds like Under the Bushes, too. Pollard and Sprout wrote some incredible songs together-- I mean, "14 Cheerleader Coldfront"? "Hot Freaks"? Guided by Voices' discography isn't exactly known for its consistency, but sometimes Pollard hits when you least expect him to-- After Mag Earwhig, I was about to throw in the towel, but the kick-ass lo-fi record they cut old-school afterwards, Tonics and Twisted Chasers made me believe again. "Optional Bases Opposed"? "The Top Chick's Silver Chord"? That record's their best-kept secret, man! It was the first album to really recapture the living room magic of Bee Thousand; rather than the band aesthetic they aimed for on Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes.
So last year, when I read that Pollard and Sprout were collaborating again on a Tonics II, I mean, that's got to totally kick ass, right? I pre-ordered it from Fading Captain the first day! Then it came like a couple of months later: Airport 5! Tower in the Fountain of Sparks! And... it wasn't their best work, but it sure sounded great. There's no mistaking Sprout's bright, trebly guitars and cheapo drum machines beneath Pollard's Marlboro-enhanced growl. And there were some nice hooks here and there-- "Stifled Man Casino" was pretty catchy, and "Circle of Trim" was prime GbV.
So I got the new one, Life Starts Here, and it's pretty much the same deal: Pollard's lyrics and vocals over instrumental beds provided by Sprout. It's the formula Pollard's been mining since Waved Out-- recording the instruments at home in his spare time with friends, then knocking out the vocals and mixes in a couple of days in a real studio with a proper engineer. Only now he doesn't write or play the music-- he just has friends like Sprout or Superchunk's Mac McCaughan send him instrumentals and sings over them, karaoke-style. So there's no real opportunity for interaction, you know? There's no re-taking the songs, no adding a bridge here or taking a few bars off the chorus there.
My biggest complaint about Guided by Voices has always been that there's a built-in disposability to the songs that leaves the listener always craving something more, something better. "That's so sweet how 'You're Not an Airplane' just ends the album like that, play it again..."; "If 'Motor Away' had just been recorded better, I know it could have been a major radio hit..."; "I can't believe they left 'Shrine to the Dynamic Years' off Do the Collapse," etc. Their live shows are the same way: "That's so cool that they just played 'Cut-Out Witch' and 'Echos Myron,' but when are they gonna play 'Peep-Hole'?" And so it goes with Airport 5.
"Yellow Wife No. 5" and "I Can't Freeze Anymore" coast along on generic Sprout bass grooves, with nothing particularly offensive or exciting to stand out. "We're in the Business" steals shamelessly from Sprout's back catalog-- essentially a slowed-down, DOA retread of "Beast of Souls" with embarrassingly off-key delivery from the Fadin' Captain. The attempts at variety in the instrumentation-- I'm thinking about the faux-horsetrot percussion on "However Young They Are" and the tinny synths on "Out in the World"-- do nothing but ham-handedly disguise more of the same ol', same ol'. The interminable, pretentious epic "Wrong Drama Addiction" and unlistenable spoken-word fragment "The Dawntrust Guarantee" kick it up a notch in the canons of awful self-indulgence. Surely Pollard, as a former schoolteacher, must once have told a kid, "You are capable of better than this."
Great music is about how it makes the listener feel, not about who appears in the credits. Albums like Life Starts Here are about as exciting as a contractual obligation, and make a mockery of good, solid songwriting and recording. It is, to be blunt, a waste of both the performer's and the listener's time.
