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Robert Pollard

Normal Happiness

Merge | 2006 | Album

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Singer/songwriter Robert Pollard is prolific if nothing else. From a Compound Eye dropped just this past January and now we have Normal Happiness making an appearance in October of this year as well. Boasting 16 short tracks (the whole album clocks in at a little over half an hour) Pollard offers up a mass of lo-fi songs. All would seem in order except that this time around, the singer seems to have delivered a product that is not so much an album as it is an incomplete thought. Songs are over before they even register. In fact, they bleed so interchangeably into one another that you could actually listen to three or four songs and easily mistake them for a single tune.

The lo-fi power pop he pioneered with his former band Guided by Voices has slipped onto the sidelines this time around. Vocally, Pollard seems to be running a race with his mid-tempo music and he always comes up short. He only seems to regain control on a few of his slower more melodic songs like “Boxing About” and “Give Up the Grape”. It’s songs like this, especially “Grape”, that hint that the Pollard of old is still lurking somewhere in the shadows.

A few other songs like “Top of My Game” and “Join the Eagles” feature something that is close to a hook, but they still aren’t completely catchy. Pollard may be out to bring back the glory days of the two minute pop song, but he forgot a few of the most important ingredients needed to bring a song to life in the land of pop – it has to be instantly recognizable and a kindergartner should be able to hum it after one or two listens.

Give Pollard credit for swinging for the fences on this one (anyone who puts out 16 tracks is a risk taker) but he just didn’t hit a home run this time around.

Amy Wagner