ROBERT POLLARD
COAST TO COAST CARPET OF LOVE
MERGE

AMAZON.COM
SCOTT HOLT

Some people collect stamps or dolls or baseball cards. There are others, though not as many, who collect Robert Pollard songs, and it's more and more evident that amassing the Pollard goldmine has become the most time-consuming hobby. Seems that every time you look up there's another record--either by Pollard or an alias--from the ex-Guided by Voices pilot, and this time he celebrates birthday 50 with two brand-new slabs of music spilling out on the same day. Where its bookend Standard Gargoyle Decisions is said to side more with Pollard's glam-rock-and-roll persona, Coast to Coast is cut from the same power-pop cloth as GbV classic cuts "Shocker in Gloomtown," "Game of Pricks," and "I Am a Scientist." Sixteen songs, 16 different hooks to reel you in, from the jangling purr of "Our Gaze" to the love-struck diffidence of "Current Desperation (Angels Speak of Nothing)" to twin psychedelic nuggets "Pnumbra" and "Youth Leagues." Since his much-adored band closed down, it seems that nothing has changed for Pollard, who endures as the perpetually prolific, massively tuneful, beer-swigging king of pop.