Robert Pollard has a clearly defined sound and style as a songwriter, and as a consequence, nearly everything he does carries his recognizable creative stamp, whether it's his solo work, his albums with
Guided by Voices, or his increasingly large number of post-
GBV projects such as
Boston Spaceships and
the Keene Brothers. What's surprising about the first album from
Pollard's latest side project,
Cosmos, is that for a change it doesn't sound all that much like a typical
Robert Pollard album.
Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks was written and recorded in collaboration with
Richard Davies of
the Moles and
Cardinal, and while his approach has clearly rubbed off on
Pollard, the often spare and slightly trippy tone of these 14 songs stakes out a territory separate from
Pollard's revved-up smart pop and
Davies' more polished and Baroque approach. Given how big
Pollard can sound with a band and the lush surfaces of
Davies' music with
Cardinal, what's most unexpected about
Jar of Jam is its compact simplicity; many of the tunes find
Pollard and
Davies accompanied by no more than a guitar or piano and some hand percussion, a few selections are just ambient soundscapes, and when the full band does comes in on "Grapes of Wrath" and "For the Whiz Kid," the results sound like a leaner and more compact variation on
Pollard's traditional approach.
Cosmos doesn't represent an especially bold or radical new direction for either
Pollard or
Davies, and some of these selections are more like fragments than fully realized songs, but the collaboration does nudge both artists into directions they might not have pursued on their own, and if you've ever been interested in either of them, you'll find some fine moments here, even if they don't cohere into a strong whole.