Boston Spaceships is real

The last couple of GBV records didn't really make me swoon or anything, and of the vast effluvia of post-GBV releases there haven' t been any I love with no reservations, and I have to say that this is mostly because of the same boring plaints that make rabid GBV fans hiss at the heresy: a lot of turgid tempos, too much senseless prog-wank to stretch what would be nice Bob songs into something "epic," and the production and instrumentations of crony Todd Tobias, which I just can't ever get so far as to enjoy (I think I can peg the lifelessness of his stuff to the drums, specifically; he must play to a metronome...just when some of these songs seem ready to take off, they, er, don't)...

I've been an examiner of all things Pollard for fifteen years and a friend of the man for nearly as long, although I don't ever hang out because of, er, diverging lifestyles. I continue to be amazed and stoked at the sheer sonic tonnage of the output: so maybe, I've thought, I've had my era and the modern diehards who want to say things like "Coast to Coast Carpet of Love or [name of post-2005 release here] slays Under the Bushes, Under the Stars," are well within their rights to do just that: this is simply their time to gawk at a living piece of rock miracle and someday Bob's infant grandson's peers will have their time and so on and so forth.

Imagine how stoked I am, then, at the arrival of Boston Spaceships' first LP Brown Submarine, which I enjoy all the way through unreservedly in a way I have not since, I dunno, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department, or maybe Airport 5's first one or the Soft Rock Renegades LP [and, yes, it is getting dark up here; non-Pollard completists are advised to skip all the jargon-y prattle herein]. It has that Pollardian ease of "Look what I can do without scarcely having to exert effort" but here Bob himself seems present, not like a guest on his own records as I have felt about the Tobias pastiches. It's one of those Bob records where the songs could come from any period in the last forty years, but still shine with a sense of invention and possibility.

So, um, yay!