Back when Helen and I toiled together, working for the same rat bastards who I hope are dead and/or die painfully, music was all we had. That and smoking Marlboros off the back fire escape. Here was where we traded stories about our wild and crazy youth and basically saved each other’s lives. Or at least she saved mine.
We also shared music and I still have lots of the great tunes from that time period on my hard drive. One day the conversation turned to Columbus, Ohio’s own Guided By Voices and she said she had not heard them. I was quick to place a copy of their most recent work “Isolation Drills” in her hands to check out. Imagine my disappointment when she handed it back to me a week later, scowling and shaking her head no.
Maybe it was because I didn’t like The Libertines and she was paying me back, but how anyone could not like GBV was beyond me, and it took some time for me to get over it.
These days, on the nyc blog, Helen and I once again work together, although we never see each other and it all happens via the over-bloated magic of the God-forsaken internet.
Helen often swoons in these pages over one of her current favourite bands, The Decemberists. Once I discovered that band’s own John Moen was in a side project with GBV’s own Robert Pollard called Boston Spaceships I felt compelled to let her know.
Boston Spaceships, to these ears, pick up where GBV left off in that they sport relentlessly melodic, hook laden, pop-punk songwriting mostly delivered by the ridiculously prolific pen of Pollard , who has over 1,000 tunes registered in his name with BMI.
In this decade alone, he has released literally dozens of records under many different names, ignoring all music business conventional wisdom that demands artists put out records every couple of years, and then promote them heavily. Pollard could care less about all that, opting instead to record it and release it quickly as the mood strikes him.
Chris Slusarenko rounds out the trio, and although Guided By Voices have recently re-united for a US tour, Boston Spaceships remains a key repository for Pollard’s songs, releasing three LPs in less than two years, with a fourth titled “Our Cubehouse Still Rocks” put out just this year.
So Helen, if you promise to give Bob Pollard another chance, I will check out The Decemberists. Everyone reading this needs to check out Boston Spaceships. They effing rock. That is all.