In 2004, Robert Pollard announced that he was retiring Guided By Voices. Apparently he wanted to go out with an album that felt good as a final album, and Half Smiles of the Decomposed felt like that album. I have no doubts that any further GBV albums would have also been great to out on, based on the post-GBV solo work of Pollard's (in particular From a Compound Eye and Normal Happiness), but alas, this is it. Half Smiles is in many ways greater than the previous album, Earthquake Glue (more variety), though it is not nearly as rocking as Universal Truths and Cycles. That being said I feel it completes a trilogy somewhat which includes those other two albums. With songs such as Girls of Wild Strawberries, Gonna Never Have to Die, and Window of My World, we can also see a sort of bridge to the upcoming solo Pollard albums. But hey, as long as they end with a song related to aircrafts everything will be alright, right?...
The Takeovers are quickly becoming one of the best Pollard-related side-projects. The duo of Robert Pollard and Chris Slusarenko bring together much of what made early GBV so great; (as stated in my roundup of the first Takeover's album) "instant classics, thrown in half-finished ideas, total toss-offs, and decent tracks, all mixed together to form an album greater than the sum of its parts." So it doesn't really surprise me that my favorite Takeovers album is actually a four song EP. Not only does it only have four songs, but one of them is on the last Takeovers album (Bad Football), and another is a alternate version of a track from their first (Turn to Red). But the real treat is just how great the other two songs are...
My conclusion of Turn to Red, the first Takeovers album, was that even though less than half of the tracks made the playlist, the album as a whole was pretty decent. For Robert Pollard and Chris Slusarenko's sophomore effort, there is less quirkiness and more rock n' roll. However, the real difference between Turn to Red and Bad Football is that Bad Football is front-stacked, and shelves the toss-offs together at the end of the disc, whereas Turn to Red mixed them in with the rest of the album. That being said, the percentage of tracks making the playlist this time around has increased...
I'm changing things up a bit. No longer am I following a chronological order of posts, but mixing it up from here on in. This way, I get to choose what release I post next a little more randomly. That being said, I am loving the Takeovers EP Little Green Onion Man, so I decided to do their first effort, Turn To Red. The Takeovers are a collaboration between Robert Pollard and Chris Slusarenko. There are some guest musicians thrown into the mix as well...
