It's just a couple of seconds long, but the few lurching guitar strums that kick off Robert Pollard's latest, Elephant Jokes, echo throughout the whole disc. For a man whose recorded output outpaces most major manufacturers, a slapdash Robert Pollard LP of particularly dour output seems at times the rule rather than the exception, and even tacking on a little flourish to get things going means Pollard's at least thought this one through to the beginning. The same could hardly be said for this winter's turgid, tossed-off The Crawling Distance, a record as easy to shrug off as it probably was to lay down. From the get-go, Elephant Jokes sounds deliberate; a deliberate go at a punchy front-to-back rock record, one, but also an intentional return to a few of the moves that made those mid-to-late-90s Guided by Voices records (and, to a lesser extent, his fine recent work with the Boston Spaceships) such a ramshackle good time.
The Crawling Distance spread 10 tracks over 36 minutes; Elephant Jokes crams 22 of 'em into just over three-quarters of an hour. Just by the numbers, that reduction is huge; since forever, all the best Pollard records have been the ones that get the most songs in, and Elephant Jokes never met an idea it couldn't swiftly abandon in 90 seconds. After a few years largely leaving the fretwork for just about anybody else, several of these songs started with Bob on guitar, with a few taking root with Pollard in an actual studio rather than mucking about at home. The pre-studio GBV records had a feeling of haphazard inception to them, like they were laid down just about anywhere the bottles could be cleared enough to set the recorder down, and in many cases they were. Bob's "I'll sing, you play" mode from the last few years has certainly stripped the music of this quality, and it's something Elephant Jokes tries to recreate.
Pollard also hasn't sounded as loosely with-it behind the mic on a record since maybe Universal Truths and Cycles. Helps that he's got some weird stuff to say, too; it can be damn near impossible to follow a Pollard free association through to its conclusion, so Elephant Jokes sports some of his better semi-sequiturs and asides in some time. You owe it to yourself to hear Uncle Bob in his best cornball voice asking, "Don't you just like college?" then prodding you about "seven or eight years" like he expects a loan repayment, and there's a good deal of playfulness here missing from the straightfaced Crawling Distance.
Not sure who's wagging which dog, but with this setup-- actually being around the folks he's recording with, playing a little, chopping it up song-wise, having lots to say, however strange-- Pollard shines. Elephant Jokes isn't just all the makings of a fine Bob Pollard record, it actually is one, carrying on its back a mostly clunker-free batch of tunes that, even when they stall out, always seem to stay on the move. "Johnny Optimist" and "When a Man Walks Away" are perfectly seasoned power-pop, with Pollard singing the hell out of either, "Symbols and Heads" shuffles its way up into similarly hooky but even rockier territory, "Epic Heads" has a strong sidelong strut to it, and "Jimmy" feels like a continuation of "A Salty Salute", and its neon guitar is nearly worthy of the honor. Album highlight "Stiff Me" bounces along on warm, wide-open chords, and Pollard's staccato vocal suits the up-and-down verse and stuttery chorus almost perfectly; it's about as fine a song as he's done since GBV ended, and it's got all the markings of a staple.
As ever, there's a few numbers that aren't worth skipping back to, and "Perverted Eyelash" and "Blown Out Man" trudge along at the awkward gate of the sludge rock I wish he'd save for the Circus Devils, and there's not all that much in the same league as "Stiff Me" and "Johnny Optimist". But the songs slip by so quickly, with a pretty damn high hit-to-miss ratio, it doesn't matter too much that so many of the hits happen to be doubles. Elephant Jokes just has a good feeling about it, as if Pollard really liked this batch, so that's why he deigned to play an instrument on it, maybe, and why he slips a little intro in and closes it out with the very final-sounding "Architectural Nightmare Man". It's still a little soft in spots, and not exactly jam-packed with Pollard classics, and for that I'm still partial to the pair of rangy, jangly Boston Spaceships LPs, both of which seem to favor new forms and exciting arrangements rather than the revisitation of a bunch of good old ideas. But, hey, a good idea's still not bad this far on, especially when the guy delivering it is really delivering. As it stands, he is; The Crawling Distance and the spotty Cosmos record with Richard Davies of the Moles notwithstanding, with this and The Planets Are Blasted, Pollard's having his best year on record since pulling the plug on GBV.
