Album Review: Elephant Jokes by Robert Pollard

It's just a couple of seconds long, but the few lurching guitar strums that kick off Robert Pollard's latest, Elephant Jokes, echo throughout the whole disc. For a man whose recorded output outpaces most major manufacturers, a slapdash Robert Pollard LP of particularly dour output seems at times the rule rather than the exception, and even tacking on a little flourish to get things going means Pollard's at least thought this one through to the beginning. The same could hardly be said for this winter's turgid, tossed-off The Crawling Distance, a record as easy to shrug off as it probably was to lay down.

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You can say this about post-GBV Robert Pollard: he’s a man quick to satisfy urges. He entertains every musical whim that comes to him, even more shamelessly now than before. Before, he had the home base of Guided by Voices to return to once he entertained himself out on those bizarre satellites. But now, cut free from his band, he’s as prolific as he ever was, and in some ways even less predictable.

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