Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).
Motor Away (1995)
Art is hard. It takes a lot of work and dedication. But when you're as brilliant as Robert Pollard, it seems to come easy. I mean, the guy's written some 3,000 songs. As the frontman of Guided By Voices, he's been a turnkey end-to-end solution for excellent lo-fi power pop songs for more than 30 years.
Pollard started GBV in the early '80s in Dayton, Ohio as a side project while he was working full-time as a teacher. He self-financed several albums with a rotating cast of band members until 1992's Propeller, when he ended the band because of his rising debt and devoted himself to teaching.
But the album caught the eye of indie label Scat Records, which signed GBV to a contract. The band's lineup solidified with guitarists Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell, bassist Greg Demos and drummer Kevin Fennell and they began playing more live shows and developing an audience beyond Dayton. In 1994, GBV's album Bee Thousand, a combination of new songs and archival recordings, scored a distribution deal with Matador Records and eventually the band signed a deal with the esteemed indie label. The band members finally quit their day jobs and focused on the music business. GBV live shows became known for Pollard's Roger Daltrey-style microphone twirling, high leg kicks and the cooler of Bud heavy he would keep on stage.
The band's first album for Matador was 1995's Alien Lanes, which featured 28 songs, although some were more fleshed out than others and almost all were under two minutes long. But even in the fragments of songs there was genius, whether it's a hook or a riff or a turn of phrase. Sprout was contributing songs as well, but most of the songwriting was done by Pollard. Songs like "A Salty Salute," "Game of Pricks," "Watch Me Jumpstart" and "As We Go Up, We Go Down" are fan favorites, but the standout for me is "Motor Away."
The guitars chug as Pollard sings about being young and freeing yourself from whatever's been holding you back, whether it's a relationship or a job or an attitude, and just hitting the open road. It's simple, direct and positively exhilarating.
"When you motor away/Beyond the once-red lips/When you free yourself/From the chance of a lifetime/You can be anyone they told you to/You can belittle every little voice that told you so/And then the time will come when you add up the numbers/And then the time will come/When you motor away/Oh, why don't you just drive away?"
The protagonist seems to doubt himself at first, but then launches into the second verse. "When you motor away/Down the icy streets/You can't lie to yourself/That it's the chance of a lifetime."
By the time he gets to the end of the chorus, he's talked himself into it.
It's just a perfect little power pop song, pure and simple.
GBV's so-called classic lineup was together for one more album before Pollard formed a new version of the band with members of Cleveland's Cobra Verde. They released the excellent Mag Earwhig in 1997 and a few more albums before Pollard wound down the project in 2004. He focused on solo work for the next several years before reforming GBV in 2010. The band has toured periodically and the ever-prolific Pollard has released more than 20 GBV albums and others under different band names. Now 66 years old, the man just keeps going, perpetually under the radar but always entertaining. If you get a chance to see them, do it.
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