Near the end of Guided by Voices’ 2018 album Space Gun — their third with their current lineup including guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March — Robert Pollard pulls out one of my favorite tricks in his arsenal.
After lighting up the “six Ps” like pinball bumpers — pop, punk, prog, psychedelic, power pop, post-punk — he throws down the gauntlet with a high-velocity, minute-and-change heater, sounding like all and none of those genres simultaneously.
If that describes the entire Pollard songbook to you, fair enough.
Give “Grey Spat Matters” a spin anyway.
Within Space Gun, this whiplashing deep cut plays an important role in setting up the show-stopping, Suitcase-sourced ballad “That’s Good” — which he initially credited to his fictitious band Remington Ash.
And it does a lot more than that, too.
Sometimes, Pollard saves the energetic crest for the closing track.
The jubilant, power-popping “My (Limited) Engagement” and “Crystal Nuns Cathedral” act as victory laps for their respective albums, 2021’s It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them! and 2022’s Crystal Nuns Cathedral.
Sequenced fourth to last on Space Gun, “Grey Spat Matters” plays a more specific role on the album — one which has everything to do with its rhythm.
Not the foreboding tumble of toms that names “Holy Rhythm,” from 2019’s Zeppelin Over China — yet arguably their holiest rhythm of all.
I’m talking about a trademark GBV drum pattern.
A motorik-style, 4/4 attack, leaning heavily into the kick and sometimes doubling the snare, usually paired with strict downstrokes.
A headlong, anticipatory rush that spans their lineage of drummers, up to the long-serving March.
To my ears, it hits as hard as techno, boom-bap, or hardcore.
However inelegant and shorthand-y, I call it “the jackhammer.”
Whatever you call it, you can hear its variations all over their catalog.
On the 7” version of “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” from 1995’s Alien Lanes:
On “Rhine Jive Click” and “Underwater Explosions,” from 1996’s Under the Bushes Under the Stars:
On “Chasing Heather Crazy,” from 2001’s Isolation Drills:
Further examples:
→ “Roll of the Dice, Kick in the Head” (Class Clown Spots a UFO, 2012)
→ “The Corners are Glowing” (The Bears for Lunch, 2012)
→ “My Future in Barcelona” (Zeppelin Over China, 2019)
→ “Queen Parking Lot” (Surrender Your Poppy Field, 2020)
→ “Electronic Windows to Nowhere” (Styles We Paid For, 2020)
And on and on we go.
To me, when “the jackhammer” is employed, it cracks something open in the music.
It lends itself to a Pollardian flow state, where I can most seamlessly surf his melodies and lyrics and ideas.
A current without resistance.
Some of the realest GBV songs seem to feature it.
Earlier in Space Gun, the trippy, circuitous “Blink Blank” seemingly casts a jaundiced eye toward the chattering class:
At quests for new triumphs
We are the champs
With endless revisions
And typewriter cramps
I'm going blink blank
In the think tank
Which tees up “Grey Spat Matters” to hit even harder:
Sleepy heavy eyelids you
Believe your sockets
Take them out slowly
And just let them dry
Try
On gray spat matters
Nothing is played out
Go home
Speed to the point
On gray spat matters
In the froth
Long before ambrosia
Flash forward to 2023: Welshpool Frillies is a late-career highlight for GBV —great songs and performances with a lumpy, arcane energy all their own.
From the alien-cyborg groan introducing “Meet the Star,” to the almost Van Morrison-like reverie that is “Why Won’t You Kiss Me,” to the third-eye-opening rocker “Awake Man,” its singular vibe doesn’t let up.
My two favorite Welshpool cuts, “Seedling” and “Radioactive Pigeons,” are like siblings to me.
Both feature that “jackhammer” rhythm — and drill into an especially archetypal zone, with that groove seemingly as skeleton key and conduit:
A brand-new baby in town view
Grew the walls of his house
Formed a groovy maze
Those were the days
When lovers drew lips
On his eyes to kiss
Fish, women, men
Them in his dream pool
Right on the word “dream,” “Seedling” takes glorious bloom.
The “fish, women, men” line echoes in “Radioactive Pigeons”:
Drink the fish, man
Dismal is what man
Is what does
Impression of an image that was
I know there’s a comma between “fish” and “man.”
But Pollard’s dealt in animal-man fusion before — solo tracks “Serious Bird Woman (You Turn Me On),” “Mouseman Cloud,” and “Human Zoo”; Circus Devils’ “Wolf Man Chords”; ESP Ohio’s “Birdman of Cloth”; Rip Van Winkle’s “Snakes with Human Heads.”
Speaking of “Birdman of Cloth,” that sounds awfully familiar:
Board the bird, man
Spark the dark where oceans speak
Of what they drink to not kill themselves
I’d never try to contrive some literal meaning for “Seedling” or “Radioactive Pigeons”; only Pollard can speak to such things.
But they feed my imagination as only he can.
(I do picture a guy with an actual bird head, and another with a fish head — which I feel on some ancestral level rather than understand.)
Then a great moment among many. At the end of “Radioactive Pigeons,” Pollard holds a sustained “Pleeeeeeeease…”
And then the song abruptly switches off and powers down, as if Pollard impulsively yanked its plug out of the wall.
In other words, just a dream — but one I long to have again and again.
I love the way Grey Spat Matters starts with what seems to be an unsyncopated drum beat. The syncopation becomes apparent, however, once Mr. Pollard’s vocals kick in. Sure, it’s not a new trick, but it works nicely.