Before Guided by Voices, before Boston Spaceships, before the Circus Devils, Go Back Snowball, Acid Ranch, Psycho & the Birds and all the rest, there was Ricked Wicky. Well, sort of; when a then-teenaged Robert Pollard dreamt up his very first band from his Dayton bedroom, the name Ricked Wicky shone down from the imaginary marquee. Through dozens of bands and hundreds of records, Pollard—whose inhuman output rarely leaves him holding much in his back pocket for very long—held onto Ricked Wicky. Why he'd resurrect it now—with Guided by Voices' second act retreating into the rearview—isn't hard to figure: though they managed six LPs in four years' time, you increasingly got the sense Pollard's famously overactive mind was starting to wander. So, after a few shaky years and far too many diminishing returns, Pollard's looking to cast off expectations, refocus his efforts, and get back to what got him here in the first place.
Ricked Wicky finds Pollard joined by a few familiars—right-hand man Todd Tobias and Earthquake Glue-era GBV drummer Kevin March—and one complete newcomer to the Pollard fold: Nick Mitchell, a Dayton guitarist who Pollard stresses is "no relation" to ex-GBV axeman Mitch. Nearly all of I Sell the Circus, Ricked Wicky's restorative 15-song debut, was laid down on analog tape at Dayton's Cyberteknics; the sound is clean, crisp, and most of all, consistent, a comparatively hi-fi spin through the beery arena rock, prog-addled balladry and post-R.E.M. jangle that Pollard's spent the last 15 years alchemizing into something all its own. I Sell the Circus isn't a particularly surprising record, but in Pollard's recent catalog, it's among the most satisfying: 15 would-be anthems and stumbling serenades, no muss, little fuss.
I Sell the Circus bounds out of the gate with a five-song stretch to rival that on any Pollard record of the last half-decade: the sunny "Well Suited", the strutting "Death Metal Kid", the spry jangle of "Guts", the champagne-on-an-empty-stomach stumble of "Cow Headed Moon", and the slick, swaggering "Piss Face". Delicately accented—a dab of pump organ here, a sliver of slide guitar there—and blithely catchy, this five-song run is post-millenial Pollard at his finest: nimble, lively, just mercurial enough.
While it starts off strong, Circus does get a little paunchy around the midsection."Uranus Flies" isn't much more than shits and giggles, while "Even Today and Tomorrow" only differentiates itself from the dime-a-dozen proggy Pollard ballads that pepper Pollard's every release only through Nick Mitchell's stately steel-string runs. Pollard passes the mic to Mitchell (who, God bless him, sounds for all the world like Bob Pollard just before) for the egghead-baiting "The Intellectual Types"; sure it's dumb, but it's just the right kind of dumb.
Pollard being Pollard, certain quirks are inevitable: throwaway lyrics, overstuffed tracks, underwritten hooks, flagging energies. But the overall impression one gets from Circus is that of engagement: Pollard clearly wants this thing to work, wants to find a few guys to play with who he doesn't feel held back by, and despite the occasional foible here and there, his dedication to Ricked Wicky's cause rings out throughout nearly all of I Sell the Circus. One regal instrumental ("Tomorrow"), another hall-of-mirrors ballad ("Rotten Backboards"), and several more-than-serviceable rockers later, and Circus goes out on a high—"A Real Stab", a stirring slab of straightahead power-pop that seems to gather strength as it charges towards the finish line.
Pollard could've kept GBV going: if nothing else, the money's probably better. Or he could've peeled off a few picture-perfect pop songs for any number of washed-up rockers without an idea between them, collected a few fat royalty checks, and spent the rest of his days holding court at home in Dayton. And he could've just as easily retreated into weirdness, content in the knowledge that the loyal servants of the Fading Captain would continue to lap up just about anything he had to offer. Instead, we get Ricked Wicky: recognizably him, but with what—after a few rocky years—feels like a renewed sense of purpose. If Circus isn't a front-to-back triumph, it's got enough juice in it to forgive the occasional misfire. Whether Ricked Wicky proves an ongoing Boston Spaceships-style reboot or just another nifty diversion remains to be seen; we'll know more in June, when their second album's due. For now, though, he's done teenage Bob proud.
