Cosmos, Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks

review by dave heaton

The Robert Pollard conundrum is this: the more albums he releases, the more his albums are likely to be labeled “inessential” or “lesser”. Yet the more albums he releases, the richer his discography becomes. A common reaction to Pollard’s prolific nature boils down to, “why doesn’t he just give us the songs we want to hear, and cut out the ones we don’t?” But if that happened, so many of his most interesting albums probably would never have been released. You can’t trust the crowd.

A case in point: some of my favorite Pollard albums or collaborations fell into dreamier, more introspective territory, but still were incredibly melodic. The two Airport 5 albums, the Go Back Snowball album, Silverfish Trivia. These are rarely mentioned as his best, often considered “inessential”, but each has a truly distinctive, thoughtful and imaginative atmosphere. In a way they are some of Pollard’s most ‘pop’ albums, with catchy melodies (albeit at a slower pace than with, say, GBV), but also experimental and strange, playing with album-length moods and textures. Falling into that same territory, and excelling at least as much, maybe more, is Cosmos’ Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks, a collaboration between Pollard and Richard Davies, of the Moles, Cardinal, and great solo albums.

Pollard and Davies are gifted pop songwriters who share a taste for the surreal (or “emotionally surreal”, perhaps – both have a way of churning up feelings even when I have no idea what they’re really singing about, though I suppose that’s even inherent in surrealism). Cosmos is the band name for them together. What they’re doing isn’t any kind of stereotypically hazy ‘space-rock’; it’s pop-rock songwriting of the sharpest sort. But there is a constant sense of mystery here. It’s created by the textures of the music, whether it’s strange whirrings (on the opening instrumental) or the combination of acoustic guitar and a steady beat. The songs themselves are question marks as well, but visceral, meaty question marks, puzzles to grab hold of – from Pollard’s declaration “we are living in a nude metropolis” (punctuated by a catchy dum-dum-da-dum) to Davies’ meandering mumble about the film Star Wars (“You Had to Be There”).

These songs play beautifully on the ears, even as weird as they are. Standouts include Davies’ narrative “Grapes of Wrath”, where struggle and pain are grasped gladly by the narrator (“the grapes of wrath are mine / leave them for me”) and Pollard’s weird and quite beautiful “Sudden Storms Are Normal”, which strikes a note of calm appreciation for wildness, with its chorus of “sudden storms are normal / your eyes are normal”, sung quite passionately over nicely twisted guitar. Pollard’s melodies on that song, “Don’t Be a Shy Nurse”, “Nude Metropolis” and “Zeppelin Commander” stand more purely than he often allows. He isn’t screwing them up just for giggles, or toughening them up for the heck of it; they’re alluring enough on their own, and he seems to realize it. “For the Whiz Kid”, “The Neighborhood Trapeze” and “Westward Ho” are the more driving rock numbers, still quite catchy and interesting. The Pollard-sung “Just By Pushing a Button” and Davies-sung “Early Chill Early Crow” are more like young children or old men picking up the nearest instrument and writing an off-the-head nursery rhyme – those sound great too. In a way Jar of Jam Ton of Bricks does resemble a fantasy tale, a fable. But it’s also a gritty, dark one, one that taps into the intersections of these two weird songwriting giants, with captivating results.

{www.robertpollard.net, www.richarddaviesmusic.com}