From the beginning, Boston Spaceships have seemed the very sort of band that makes double LPs. Over four albums and a live set, longtime frontman Robert Pollard's most dependable post-GBV group has dealt in obnoxiously catchy, insistent, Meadowlands-ready power-pop caught somewhere between Cheap Trick's Heaven Tonight and the Who's Quadrophenia. Pollard, Decemberists drummer John Moen, and Spaceships sonic mastermind Chris Slusarenko may not play arenas-- in fact, the Spaceships haven't played much of anywhere in years-- but their best tunes have both the hooks and the heft to reach the back-bleachers. Seems like any good arena rock band, whether real or perceived, eventually gets around to the double-discer.
2008's Brown Submarine arrived in the wake of a mid-2000s turn toward overcooked, plodding, patchy numbers run through with too many opposing currents. Over their four fine LPs, the Spaceships have pushed the hooks right out front, done away with almost everything short of the mid-tempo, and culled many of the musical left-turns, leaving Pollard with four of the most immediately enjoyable, fat-free LPs of his career. Between Pollard's excitable vocals and streamlined hooks, Slusarenko's rich but unfussy arrangements, and Moen's rock-solid but far-from-flashy backbeat, the spotlight's always seemed fixed on the songs themselves.
A double LP is different: With all that extra room, you can stretch out, goof off, or beef up, all of which Let It Beard does, sometimes quite well. These guys, 1970s rock junkies that they are, are scholars of the form, and it's to their credit that Let It Beard doesn't sound like two single-length Boston Spaceships LPs affixed at the gatefold. It operates instead like a double LP from that format's classic era, with roomier tunes, more expansive arrangements, ripping guitar solos, and (largely inconsequential) cameos from the likes of Wire's Colin Newman, the Dirtbombs' Mick Collins and Dinosaur Jr.'s J Mascis. The way they break down Let It Beard's four sides even seems to hold to the classic template: A is for the bombastic, ambitious ones, the rockers are on B, the weird ones on C, and D brings it all together. Alas, that most damning of double-album takedowns is also true of Let It Beard: At 26 songs and 75 minutes, it's entirely too long.
A portent of things to come, bumpy opener "Blind 20-20" never finds its footing, shifting brusquely between unadorned piano-and-vocal and a thuddy riff. Titles aside, the empty snarl of "Juggernaut vs. Monolith" and the centerless "Tourist U.F.O." don't fare much better. These first few songs either fail to get to the point (or don't seem to have much point to get to...). "Minefield Searcher" sounds strikingly like a Robyn Hitchcock cover of a Cheap Trick song and it's the set's first truly spirited melody, but it's over before you'll notice. "Make a Record for Lo-Life" proves the set's first big winner, its bright, knotty melody bashed out with marksman's ease, but it's quickly followed by the dismal "Let More Light in the House", a dirgey, disinterested moaner just barely salvaged by its banjo-and-snare-augmented second half. It's hard to think of a more lackluster stretch on a Pollard record of any vintage. Could be they didn't want to stick all the good ones up front, but whatever the case, no one's going to accuse Let It Beard of being frontloaded.
Things pick up with lively punker "You Just Can't Tell", leading Beard into its heftier second quarter. The album's highest high, the sorta-Stonesy soul-singer-assisted pub-rocker "Chevy Marigold", takes its time getting everything right, and the stretch that follows-- the peppy "Earmarked for Collision" and "Toppings Take the Cake" and the triumphal "Tabby and Lucy"-- is Let It Beard's best, a lot of fun without a whole lot of fuss. Not coincidentally, it's this run that feels most like the Spaceships LPs that've come before it, their tempos swift, their hooks coming in quick and dirty. In a way, Let It Beard's overly sinewy opening stretch feels like the tension before the glorious release of this rocky run. But the other Spaceships records have never felt the need to tease the listener in quite this way: There's no waiting around for the good song when every song's pretty good.
Then there's "(I'll Make It) Strong for You", a stirring, stripped-down curio that ushers in Beard's oddest section. This third side finds Pollard's eccentricties taking over in a way (Circus Devils aside) he hasn't allowed himself in some time. Take the schizoid "A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House", vacillating wildly between soft strums and fierce shouts; it's not brilliant, but it's peculiar in a far less leaden way than the row of misses that kicks off the collection. They're not all winners back there-- too bad Pollard wasted a title like "The Ballad of Bad Whiskey" on such a dreary tune-- but they're the first indication that a double LP was, in fact, a good idea for the Spaceships. With all this extra time, they can afford to be a little odder, stick their necks out a little more, and while it's a shame they seem to separate the pop from the weirdness-- rather than letting them bleed all over each other, as on Pollard's best records-- at least here the latter makes a good showing. "Let it beard and get all weird," Pollard sings on the title track, and that's as close to a thesis statement as the album offers: This is what we do, he's saying, only scragglier. And so it is.
To cap things off, a side of solidly unspectacular riff-rockers and spindly balladry culminates in rousing closer "Inspiration Points". While it does bring together the diffuse strong structures, the stop/start energy, and a bit of the off-kilter weirdness that characterizes the preceding sides, it's not quite the misstep-salvaging send-off a piece of this length merits. Through decades of setlists and LPs alike, Pollard's always shown a knack for pacing, so it's odd that Let It Beard seems so sluggishly arranged. But Let It Beard's undoing isn't its formatting, but its songs themselves; there are simply fewer winners to be had here than on any Spaceships LP that came before it, and they're spread over a far greater expanse. A terrific amount of thought seems to've gone into Let It Beard's structure, its scope, its knowing nods to an earlier era's excess. But one vital question seems to have eluded them: Do we actually have the tunes to pull this off? They didn't; not quite, anyway. In a surprising turn, an email went out to the Pollard faithful this week, announcing that the brash, boisterous Let It Beard would prove the Spaceships' swan song. That's the other thing about the great arena-rock bands; even in their excess, they leave us wanting more.
