Brown Submarine; 2008
14 songs, 32 mins
Mike:
When I first read the album title “Brown Submarine” I chuckled to myself with the certainty that it was a reference to a turd in a toilet bowl, in the vein of Pollard’s fake and often scatological band names that he uses on the GBV Suitcase collections (e.g., “Urinary Track Stars,” “Ghost Fart”). After that, I listened closely to the song “Brown Submarine” on the album. It starts with the lyrics, “I love her, she love me, we go down to the sea,” which made me doubt my poop-related theory for the album’s title. I guess if you think about it enough, the lyrics could be referencing the pleasures of taking a satisfying dump but I kinda doubt it, as he sounds pretty sincere. At this point, I don’t know what Pollard’s referencing in the album title but I’m pretty sure I can live with that uncertainty. Moving on…
Brown Submarine, the first Boston Spaceships album, starts out with Winston’s Atomic Bird. The tune has a great hooky chorus and sounds somewhat outside what I’d expect from Pollard. It’s hard to put my finger on why, but there are some chord progressions there that don’t strike me as “Pollardy.” The remainder of Brown Submarine is a pretty stripped down but well produced rock album, alternating between mellow tunes (e.g., “Andy Playboy,” “Go for the Exit”) and harder up-tempo songs (e.g., “Rat Trap,” “Ate it Twice”). No sign of “lo-fi Bob” or “farting around Bob” here. “Still in Rome” was a somewhat odd multi-part tune, of the type that pop up here and there in the GBV repertoire. Most of Pollard’s mini-rock opera songs don’t work for me all that well, as they just sound like a bunch of song ideas just awkwardly smashed together, but I really enjoyed this one. Zero Fix is an otherwise great rocker that’s marred by the final section, where he irritatingly repeats “how high can you go” over and over. Another up-tempo tune, “Psych Threat,” didn’t really hit the mark with me. Other than these few minor bumps in the road, however, Brown Submarine was an enjoyable and genre-defying listen.
Dan:
Fun! I like this band, one of the many iterations of Robert Pollard sideprojects. Seemingly named for a GBV song based on my Spotify search. Turns out to be pretty raw Suitcase song. The guitars are bright like the band Boston, is that part of the joke? “Andy Playboy” sounds like a fine song. “Ate it Twice” sometimes sounds like Dylan in the vocals and Simon and Garfunkel in the guitars, especially recalling The Graduate soundtrack, Ate it Twice like also owes something to “Handbone.” Pollard in good, clear voice, ringing out like a bell on “Winston’s Atomic Bird,” maybe a tic or two higher than where he usually sings, though it sounds comfortable. “You Satisfy Me” has a catchy guitar riff and would not feel out of place on a good, late era GBV album, Pollard even sounds like himself. It's as if he said, “I’ll pretend this is a different band,” and was able to keep it up for two songs. “Ready to Pop” has a fun sing-along part at the end, “she’s so my size?” Followed by “Still in Rome,” a faux prog rock song that finds Pollard adopting a stentorian growl while chewing the lyrics. The album exits with “Go For the Exit,” bright guitars, generous lyrics, and Pollard in a comfortable, in-command mood. Great stuff.
Planets are Blasted; 2009
14 songs, 34 mins
Mike:
Boston Spaceships continues in the “no B.S., stripped down, straightforward rock” vein with their second album, The Planets are Blasted. Most of the songs are just guitar, bass, and drums, without a heckuva lot of elaboration beyond the three members doin’ their thing. I can definitely get behind the idea, but are the songs any good? The answer is, yes. The Planets are Blasted is a competent collection of tunes from a mature songwriter. Like its predecessor, there aren’t any super-catchy, kickass songs here, but that’s OK. While Pollard is occasionally capable of writing catchy tunes, that’s not his biggest strength. Where he shines is his reliability. The guy can knock out dozens of consistently good songs, with very few stinkers. Given the lack of hooks, The Planets are Blasted is an album that’ll grow on you with repeated listens. Nearly all the tunes are well-crafted, avoiding the slapped-together, rambling vibe you get from some of Pollard’s later stuff.
There are some great uptempo rockers on The Planets are Blasted – “Keep Me Down,” and “Heavy Crown” (probably my favorite song on the album) are a few examples. “Big O Gets an Earful” is a slower, heavier tune that really caught my ear. There were only a couple of tunes that didn’t really hit home. “Sylph” suffers a bit from the rambling melody issues that I mentioned above. It could use some tightening up. Sight on Sight jumped from one uninteresting chunk to another and didn’t really do anything for me. Honestly, other than that, I can’t say I had any major beefs with the album. A good effort overall.
Dan:
This thing races right out of the gate with “Canned Food Demon,” a toe tapper with a great hook starting the Boston Spaceship’s sophomore effort. Sophomore effort; that’s the kind of phrase a real music critic would use, a cliché of the genre, as if the Boston Spaceships are a college student. That would make the album Zero to 99, which Mike has already written and submitted, Boston Spaceship’s junior year effort, Our Clubhouse Still Rocks senior year, and Let it Beard grad school. But what about Licking Stamps and Drinking Shitty Coffee, BS’s fairly excellent (spoiler!) live album? Gap year? Travel abroad semester? Metaphors are hard!
“Tattoo Mission” has some strings and marches along in an almost stately manner. “Keep me Down” is another not especially memorable song, but polished and an actual mood lifter while it’s in your life for two minutes and forty seconds. “Queen of Stormy Weather” is a mid level, up beat number which finds Pollard in clear voice singing again about Indian tongues. “The Town That’s After Me” also great, Pollard’s voice echoing, short, looking over his shoulder. “Sight on Sight” a strange song about the Planet of Apes. Lyrically hyperbolic, entirely ironic, silly lines with throbbing guitar. “Heavy Crown,” closes it out, a dignified middle aged rocker. P are B is as solid effort, lean, compelling, and would be the best album in a dozen other middling careers, but in Pollard’s oeuvre, let’s call it a Thursday.
Zero to 99
2009; 16 songs, 37 mins
Mike:
Boston Spaceships, keeping up a GBV-like pace, gives us their second album of 2009, Zero to 99. The album opens up with “Pluto the Skate,” a loud, distortion-filled, jerky oddball – much different than the Boston Spaceships stuff I’ve heard so far. Though I’m not always a huge fan of Pollard’s, atonal aural experiments, I actually liked this one. Bands usually start out an album with a catchy uptempo tune to get the ball rolling, so apparently Pollard was using this one to chase away potential listeners. After blasting out my ears with “Pluto the Skate,” I was expecting the rest of the album to be in this vein. But no – Zero to 99 is fairly similar to the previous two B.S. albums, with its no-frills approach to the music. A couple of songs have some extra synth thrown in here or there but that’s pretty much it.
There is, however, one big difference between this album and the previous two. Zero to 99 is chock full of catchy songs that are helped out a lot by good, punchy production. The first highlight of the album is “How Wrong You Are.” I wasn’t a huge fan of the jerky verse but dammit, the chorus is so hooky that you forget there’s a chunk you didn’t like. This is followed a couple of songs later by “Found Obstruction Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which is a hard-rockin’ kickass tune in an old-school punk vein. It only has 7,200 listens on Spotify. What the hell?
A few songs later you get “Psycho Is a Bad Boy,” another raw-sounding tune. This one has a heavy, twangy bass line that really caught my ear. Only 5,500 listens for this one. Fuck you, Spotify! The best song on the album is “Let It Rest for a Little While,” a mellower mid-tempo rocker, with an awesome chorus. Oh – Oh – there’s also “Meddle” and “A Good Circuitry Soldier!” Man, this album really deserves a whole lot more attention than it seems to have gotten. Pollard isn’t really a hooky songwriter, but this one really knocks it out of the park. He’s on top of his game here.
Dan:
Starts out with “Pluto the Skate,” with Pollard plaintively asking if everybody is happy now, over a plangent guitar which morphs into a grungy, full-on guitar assault. It’s a bit of heaviness that gives away to the comedic, “How Wrong You Are,” which includes a faux falsetto chorus sounding like a child’s choir, although not very much like one. This is a Boston Spaceship all timer for me, right up there with the one about him in the bathroom all night long, which we have not yet gotten to yet. (Mike, you have been forewarned.) “Trashed Aircraft Baby” sounds like it would be right at home on Quadrophenia, the bass line not so much echoing Entwistle as channeling him. “Meddle” is just good. “Let it Rest for a Little While” is a gorgeous song with an irresistible chorus, a crie de cour to leave things alone. I love this album.
Camera Found the Ray Gun Our Cubehouse
2010; 4 songs, 8 mins 2010; 16 songs, 42 mins
Still Rocks
Dan
When I was listening to REM in the 1980s and a little in the 90s, it seemed to me that each REM album said something; that there was a narrative the band was building you could only discern chapter by chapter by listening to the albums, even if the narrative itself didn’t lend itself to easy explanation. Does Boston Spaceships have a narrative? Four albums and an EP into a five album and a live record oeuvre, I am not sure. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have its charms or cohere in a more visceral way than REM. “Track Star” opens the album with a few seconds of what almost sounds like a religious chanting over a sitar, but soon turns into a BS song, with Pollard musing about a runner. “I See You Coming,” is a wistful song, mournful, which yields to the more upbeat “Fly Away (Terry Sez).” “The British and the French” is a fun song, almost a mock Schoolhouse Rock with simple bromides being solemnly dispensed, like Polonius’ advice to Laertes. “Come On Baby Grace” is an upbeat heart lifter, catchy chorus, right there in the pocket with the best of Pollard. “Dunkirk Is Frozen” is a great song. Is it about WWI? “In the bathroom, up half the night” ends the album. The momentum of the tune ebbs and flows, like whatever it is keeping Pollard up half the night. Say more about this, Bobby. Cubehouse is not as strong as some of the earlier material but still a plenty entertaining album.
Mike
In late 2010, the Boston Spaceshippers pumped out Our Cubehouse Still Rocks, their fourth album in two years. While I’ve enjoyed all the B.S. stuff so far, this one is the first album that didn’t really hit home for me. Don’t get me wrong - there are a fair number of decent tunes on the album. “John the Dwarf Wants to Become an Angel” is a nice one, as is “Come On Baby Grace,” a fun, upbeat-sounding tune in a Nick Lowe vein. The next song, “Freedom Rings,” is a solid, heavy, slow-tempo rocker. It’s probably my favorite song on the album. So that’s the good stuff.
The biggest issue with Our Cubehouse Still Rocks is that the remainder of the songs aren’t all that memorable. None of them are bad (I’m convinced that Pollard is incapable of writing a terrible song) but there wasn’t a whole lot to sink your teeth into. “The British and the French” has a damn accordion in it (hey, that’s unique!) but the song is as tepid as something very tepid (fill in your favorite tepid thing). On “Bombadine,” Pollard busts out his full imitation Roger Daltrey voice, channeling The Who like no one can. It could work in principle but nah, I’m not feeling it. “Dunkirk is Frozen” also features an accordion bit (which I can get behind) but yeah, not a heckuva lot there. The album finishes off with the tune, “In the Bathroom (Up ½ the Night).” The song’s title piqued my interest - why was Pollard was in the bathroom half the night? Bad oysters? Too much Blatz beer? I listened carefully to the lyrics, but I did not get any clear explanation as to why Pollard was in the bathroom. Presumably he was either throwing up, blasting his pants, or both.
Mike:
Camera Found the Ray Gun is a little four-song EP that Boston Spaceships pinched out in spring 2010. All four tunes rock pretty hard. The first song, “The Way Out” is probably my favorite. On two of the other songs, “Rival GT” and “Aquarian Hovercraft,” Pollard starts out rockin’ and then…he pulls the plug midway through to give us some of his acoustic juice. Now I’ve complained in some of my GBV reviews that Pollard has an annoying habit of pulling the plug on a tune’s momentum for no good reason, thereby killing the damn thing. I will not invoke this beef with regard to these two tunes, however. The plug-pulling works here, so go ahead Bob, pull that plug. Overall, Camera Found the Ray Gun is a good effort from Pollard and the two other Boston Spaceships guys. The whole thing is over in less than nine minutes, so even if you wind up not liking it, your time investment is minimal. Better than listening to Suite: Judy Blue Eyes for the 400,000th time.
Dan
Starts our rocking--The Way Out and Rivet GT are fine little ditties. Pluto is Polluted rhymes Jesus with please us. That’s okay, I guess. Last song, Aquiarian Hovercraft has elements of Day in the Life, Beatles song, and is a bit trippy. I mean it’s an exaclt reference. If Mr M doesn’t mention it, sue him for malpractice.
Let it Beard
2011 26 songs, 75 mins
Mikey Says:
Let it Beard is a kickass album that rocks hard, proving that Boston Spaceships was not a half-assed Pollard side project. He and the other BS guys are throwin’ all the juice into this one and it shows. The album went through an odd process from beginning to end, one in which Pollard never actually met up with the rest of the band. After getting the demos from Pollard, Chris Slusarenko (bass) and John Moen (drums) laid down their portions of the 26 songs, but – get this – Moen, recorded his bits without having heard the songs beforehand. Wow, that takes nerve. Supposedly this was an attempt to capture the raw energy of the early GBV output that had perhaps been lost when Pollard decided to smooth out the rough edges (compare e.g., Bee Thousand from 1994 vs. Isolation Drills from 2001). After that, Slusarenko spent months tweaking and adding to each track to make the album a coherent whole and squeeze out every bit of impact he could.
The end product – and its great success – is a strong reflection of Slusarenko’s meticulous approach to the material and purposeful vision for the end product. Honestly, I don’t think that Pollard’s material is way above average on Let it Beard. There are a few great songs, some good ones, and a few that aren’t all that super. What differs here is the effort that went into producing an album that punches hard every step of the way, and that endeavor succeeds on all counts. Some of the highlights include “The Vicelords,” “Make a Record for Lo-Life,” and “You Just Can’t Tell.” Give the album a listen. These songs (and others) will get stuck in your subconscious for days. Pollard et al. also apparently cashed in some favors on Let it Beard, as there are a bunch of guest guitar spots on various songs. The most noticeable is J. Mascis from Dinosaur Jr., who contributes one of his kickass solos to round out “Tourist U.F.O.”
For reasons unknown to me, Pollard decided to wrap up the Boston Spaceships project after this album and revive the classic GBV lineup, who came out with Let’s Go Eat the Factory only a year later. I have no idea why he decided to return to the GBV brand after Let it Beard. Seems to me that Boston Spaceships was killing it on its own.
Danny Says:
Since we last published anything on this creaky ol Pequod of a website, the book Pop Zues was published to near universal acclaim. And yet, here Mike and I are, humble as ever, to dish up more GBV thoughts.
I’ll start with this: as you begin your search for Let it Beard on Spotify, it guess you might be looking for a some obscure album called “Let it Be.” Um, no. Then it thinks you might mean “Let it Bleed.” Do they not know Pollard’s penchant for the witty, satirical song titles, ala Cat Scratch Stevens or Cheap Truck?
Blind 20-20 starts hard to follow but settles down to a confident groove which feels like the end of an album, but is instead only the middle of one song, as it changes again. This first song is really three different songs, befitting the most solid, longest, and most fecund of all the Boston Spaceships albums. “Make a Record for Low-Life” is compelling, Pollard sweetly crooning, “Darling make a record with me.” Almost all these songs are polished, presentable, and little chunks of gold. “Chevy Marigold” sounds like a mid aughts love song. “Earmarked for Collision” starts out like “Exit Flagger,” which maybe is appropriate for a song seemingly about car crashes. “Tabby and Lucy” a fun little ditty, followed by “(I’ll Make It) Strong For You,” which is a total downer. “Pin Cushion,” a super fast fun number where you can almost see the lyrics on the page, “pin cushion, you always stick it in me, I’m a, pin cushion….” A little joke perhaps in search of a melody. “Speed Bumps” is an almost musical-theater level song, cataloging things that Pollard finds annoying. He wonders who invented Cell phones, speed bumps, moon walking, time zones, and declares that individual has taken his rights away, or is he saying my right of way?
This is the end of the Boston Spaceships catalog as currently constituted. I wish there were more but it’s time to move on. If only they had made a live album….
Licking Stamps and Drinking Shitty Coffee
2013 26 songs, 61 mins
DLibs:
Discovered this on 4/4/19 while trying avoid work. Had already decided I love Boston Spaceships and had absorbed previously the discography. This non Spotify-available album appears to be a double record when on vinyl, orange and black vinyl that is, which can be purchased for 95 dollars online. Too rich for my blood but listening for free on Yootoob fits the ol’ budget nicely. Being on Youtube, I had to hand-count the songs, just as they are—as I type this—counting ballots in every state across our fragile nation. If I miscounted the songs there is no real penalty unlike the potentially for the vote counters. I got the timing off yootoob and the date too. Sounds like from what Mike wrote I got it right.
I love the name of the album and the cover art. Also, it sounds great. The setlist very closely resembles my handcrafted Boston Spaceships Playlist, (I do a lot of things by hand,) so I did a pretty good job. Ends with Sensational Gravity Boy! Is this the only song he plays under three different band names? Probably not. SGB is one of my favorite Pollard songs not played by GBV to my knowledge, though I bet I’m completely wrong on that score. Soggy Beavers sounds particularly good here. With this review, Boston Spaceships is fully in the Completerist book now, (figuratively speaking, it’s not in our actual book, which holy moly I still need to get a link to on the website!) Anyway, fingers crossed on the election, America.
MStrez:
Boston Spaceships apparently only played seventeen live shows in the four-year history of the band. All were in September/October 2008, soon after their first album, Brown Submarine, was released. Too bad, because the live album, Licking Stamps and Drinking Shitty Coffee, shows pretty clearly that it would’ve been fantastic to see them play.
Given that Boston Spaceships only had only their debut album to draw from at that time, it’s not surprising that they lean heavily on what they had to offer. Nearly every tune from Brown Submarine is included in the set. Another four tracks are from their next album, The Planets are Blasted, which was released about four months after this show. Apparently they were pretty tapped out after that, cuz the remaining nine tracks are from various Pollard side projects and obscure GBV songs.
Looking through the 25 tunes on Licking Stamps, it’s notable that Pollard doesn’t fall for obvious opportunities to pander to the crowd. He could’ve interspersed mainstream GBV stuff into the show and the fans, no doubt, would’ve eaten it up. Nope – he sticks to new and/or lesser-known material for the duration. No “Teenage FBI” or “Tractor Rape Chain” here. That’s a bit of a risk, but the fans (not unexpectedly) are still cheering like madmen after each song, so I guess they just wanted to bask in the Pollard aura, even if they didn’t get to hear all their faves.
The show is a bit rough around the edges – not too surprising, since the band hadn’t much time to hone their live set. It doesn’t matter though, since it’s evident the BS guys are still playing with helluva lot of punch. Besides, rock music has never been about virtuosity anyways. The only thing I can complain about on Licking Stamps is that the sound on the recording kinda sucks – Pollard’s voice is drowned out and you can hardly hear him in some spots.
The show recorded for Licking Stamps and Drinking Shitty Coffee was their second-to-last. After that, there were no more opportunities to see Boston Spaceships. I suppose Pollard had his reasons for choosing to make the band a studio-only endeavor but it’s obvious that that decision wasn’t based on a lack of ability to bring the juice to the fans. They were clearly killin’ it on that night.