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It’s got to be a bitch being Robert Pollard. You write some of the most indelible melodies
of the last 25 years….and then you decide to write about 2,000 more of them,
releasing them at a pace that would challenge even those without a full-time
job to keep up and keep track. And you’ll
never top the “masterpiece” that you recorded in a last-ditch attempt at
escaping your day job almost 20 years ago, so you reform the “classic” version
of that band and pump out 4 records in 16 months that sound kinda like the GBV
of old but more approximately almost exactly like the stuff that has your own
Christian name attached. You can’t
win. Which brings us to “Honey Locust
Honky Tonk”, another perfectly fine and intermittently excellent solo slab of
Brit Invasion melodies, minute-long detours, and heart-on-sleeve balladry that
is on par with what is expected of you.
Much has been written about how “consistent” this album
sounds (and perhaps that’s correct if your idea of “inconsistent” is an album
of solo-recorded sonic belches and squiggles which was released the same day
under the moniker Teenage Guitar!), but if anything it most closely resembles
2006’s scattershot double-album, “From A Compound Eye”. Partly due to longtime collaborator Todd
Tobias’ indistinct production and competent/”professional” accompaniment, there
are few real highs but equally as few lows, and the good certainly outweighs
the bad (and the “embarrassing” is entirely absent). First single “I Killed A Man Who Looks Like
You” embeds some of Pollard’s most straightforward lyrics in years in backing
that wouldn’t sound out of place in a late-80’s R.E.M. record and “Who Buries
the Undertaker” has a ridiculously catchy melody. Finest of all might be album-closer, “Airs”,
which sounds like the best track that wasn’t on GBV Mach II’s swansong, “Half
Smiles of the Decomposed” .
It doesn’t all work – the brilliantly-titled “I Have to
Drink” wastes its 43-second runtime and I think Black Francis might have a case
for suing over the melody of "It Disappears in the Least Likely Hands (We Might Never Not See)" (seriously, try singing “Wave
of Mutilation” over the verses!) – but he’s batting above average and there are
some real gems throughout. Pollard has
hinted that Guided By Voices might be no more, and if that’s the case we could
certainly do much worse than another round at the “Honky Tonk”.
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