Bad Football
The Takeovers
Second album from Robert Pollard and former Guided by Voices bassist Chris Slusarenko is remarkably consistent for a post-GbV side project; guests include Stephen Malkmus and Tad Doyle.
Despite having former Quasi, Mudhoney, and Guided by Voices members among their numbers, The Takeovers' first record Turn to Red was a little lost in the deluge of Robert Pollard's post-GbV material. It had something to do with the hit-or-miss ratio of its tunes, of course, but it didn't help that Pollard released it with two other albums on the same day. We're hearing even less noise about the band's second record, despite the added support of Stephen Malkmus and members of the Decemberists and Tad Doyle this time out. And though it may get shoved aside again in light of the new two-disc "best-of" from the Fading Captain series of Pollard ephemera (culling songs from nearly everything but this record), Bad Football is one of his strongest releases since disbanding his former band. Not only does it return him to the unpredictable tape experiments and lo-fi scruff of his most-loved period with GbV, it revels in something long missed in all his ensuing solo work: spontaneity.
I'm not calling it a "return to form," and I'm not saying there aren't some dogs-- "Kicks at the Gym" is fucking odious, with Pollard adopting a red-faced bleat while aping the jocks the way he savaged liberal arts kids on Turn to Red's "Fairly Blacking Out", and it's not half as clever as you'd imagine it. But if you've found yourself missing "old Bob," he's here, somewhere. He's almost defiant about the transparency of his process, turning the ready-made anthem "Pretty Not Bad" into a rousing ode to adequacy ("Wrote a song and I like it 'cuz it's pretty not bad"), and even deflates all the sneer in his vocal by calling attention to his long-abused fake English accent. Pollard could probably write songs like these in his sleep, and maybe that's why he pokes holes in some of their tires along the way, as tracks like "Smokestacks Bellowing Stars" and "My Will" have halting tape-recorded dialog interludes that diffuse their melodies and momentum.
Yet most of them can't be stopped: the tender vocal turn of "I Can See My Dog" will poke your tear ducts with evocative homespun detail, and a song from a quinquagenarian indie rocker (as of later this year, anyway) about settling accounts ("My Will") sounds like another ageless cousin to "Motor Away" or "Teenage FBI". Elsewhere, the band veers from brief spurts of bumpkin rock on "Father's Favorite Temperature" to Brit-folk story-songs on "Molly & Zack", while "You're At It" returns to small-town ennui about "blackboard Mondays" and, between a reassuringly shambling rhythm section and some confident guitar licks, is as convincingly hedonistic as Pollard's sounded ("This form of suicide's not quick enough, what else you got?").
Part of the appeal for hardcore fans is sifting for these moments, certainly. But for everyone else, there's much less filtering than usual to do here, and even the near-misses and the not-even-aiming tracks have a returned glimmer of inspiration and insanity nicked from Pollard's old basement Frankensteins. "The Jester of Helpmeat" is wholly inexplicable, but at a minute's runtime is still palatable with some curious carnivalesque production tricks. "Music For Us" must mean music for estranged uncles drunk at 2:00 p.m. who mumble over claw-handed piano chords, and when it almost gets normal, an announcer's voice shouts about the new "smash sensation" (and, I believe, "smashusations") midway through, never to be heard from again.
No one would put up with these tracks on their own (unless you're one of the few buying Circus Devils albums), and yet, the golden moments wouldn't be the same if they weren't a spoonful of sugar to make Pollard's whole kooky, kaleidoscopic persona go down. GbV records used to have all these weird detours next to the pop perfection before Pollard figured out what a side project was; Bad Football marks the first occasion in years where they all crowd into the same Chevy again. It's not a greatest hits record, and it's not even a GbV record, but we've got plenty of those. Whatever the name on the front or the pedigree of its members, it is a Robert Pollard record and one worth owning, as its winners and warts all gush with the same charm as they once did.
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