If there's anything like a normal year for Bob Pollard fans, 2013 wasn't it. These past 12 months did offer a fine new EP and an okay-enough album—their fourth since early 2012—from the reunited Guided by Voices. But it's become increasingly clear that a classic on par with the lo-fi legends' peak-era material might've been a little too much to ask for. Then there was the late-summer tiff between Pollard and drummer Kevin Fennell, whose unsuccessful attempt to peddle the beaten-to-shit drumkit he'd recorded many GBV classics on got him publicly shamed and subsequently fired by his old pal Bob. Bursts of drama notwithstanding, shows were few and far between, and side-hustles have been scant and largely of little consequence. The lone bright spot came this summer, when Pollard issued the rich, graceful Honey Locust Honky Tonk, instantly cementing itself as one of the best records under his own name. Now, Pollard's closing out this weird year with Blazing Gentlemen, a headier, rockier counterpoint to the unfailingly sweet Honey Locust.
For a guy who's made records every which way, the approach Pollard took with Gentlemen's construction is especially peculiar. Instead of appliquéing words onto melodies, he built these songs from the lyrics up, scouring his notebooks line-by-line for titles and lyrics, then writing melodies—and then chords—around those. Pollard's always been a collagist—sometimes quite literally—but this method feels especially piecemeal; every few lines, the underriding melody seems to shift, leaving behind any sense of continuity. Much of Pollard's best work has taken a similarly attention-deficient tack, although Gentlemen's disjointment is at the micro level, all mismatched segments and jarring transitions. And, given the wide range in quality between one segment to the next, your time with Gentlemen's spent waiting around for the good part, only to find it gone before you've been properly introduced.
Ramrodding through 16 songs in 32 minutes and change, Gentlemen may be the least classically pretty Pollard in ages; ballads are scant, distortion's applied liberally, and while the fidelity's fairly high and the instrumentation consistent, the collection—throwing Honey Locust's carefully considered lushness in stark relief—opts for the quick and dirty. Pollard and Gentlemen cohort Todd Tobias—together, responsible for every sound you hear on the record—have certainly arranged a plaintive melody or two in their day, but Gentlemen largely leaves these overexcitable songs to their own devices. Opener "Magic Man Hype" is held together by sheer inertia, rumbling through chord after oddball chord. The title track matches a sludgy verse to a towering chorus, which would be fine, if an out-from-nowhere bridge didn't pop up to derail the forward motion. "His passionless kisses are real hits and misses," Pollard sings on "Blazing Gentlemen", and that pretty much sums it up: song for song, Pollard records are typically a hodgepodge, but the eternally jumpy Gentlemen whittles that inconsistency down to a second-by-second basis.
Whenever Pollard can keep an idea in his head for more than a minute at a time, Gentlemen starts to click. The cowbell-imbued "Faking the Boy Scouts" sports the set's stickiest hook; sure, its verses are a tad on the jittery side, but unlike much of Blazing Gentlemen, they at least seem to be acquainted with the chorus that follows. "Tea People" is one of those effortlessly catchy, totally stupid stompers only Pollard can get away with, and again, its verse and chorus seem to have been in the same room before. But for every song that seems to have been conceived as a piece, there are two more assembled from whatever they had lying around. "Tonight's the Rodeo" is elegant enough at first, but its chorus—all three seconds of it—is given neither time nor space to develop itself as anything but a nuisance. The lyrics are just as scatterbrained as the music, notebook dumps turned not-so-exquisite corpses; Pollard-logic is never an easy path to follow, but Gentlemen gets your head spinning in a fashion that'll have you swearing off the stuff the next morning.
Are two half-formed ideas as good as one complete thought? Gentlemen seems to think so. But, for all of Gentlemen's nervy shapeshifting, its fitful thrills never quite make for a satisfying whole; it's too restless, too scattered, too gangly. Even the record's more-consistent-than-usual sound can't help hold these spasmodic, shapeshifting songs together for more than a couple minutes at a time. Some fans will no doubt revel in Gentlemen's endless discrepancies; after all, part of being a Pollard obsessive is learning to take the bad with the good. But, on Gentlemen, the bad and the good are so manically intertwined, it gets to be a little tough telling them apart. Gentlemen's about as interesting as middling Pollard records get, but it's middling all the same, a fittingly abnormal end to a most unusual year.
