(Guided By Voices, Inc.)

www.robertpollard.net

Robert Pollard's standing as the hardest-working man in indie-rock is further reinforced by the emergence of a brand new project, Boston Spaceships, just a few months down the road from the appropriately titled solo effort Robert Pollard Is Off To Business. This one is what Pollard calls his "pop punk album, made by and for kids who've worn out the grooves on their Cheap Trick, Alice Cooper, Wire and dB's records." But there's nothing especially pop-punk about it, despite the occasional chugging guitar. And even at their most iconoclastic, the dB's were practically slaves to pop tradition compared to the more eccentric urges Pollard follows here.

The crunch-guitar riff that eases you into the album may share certain sensibilities with power-pop - recalling Graham Coxon's Happiness in Magazines - but by the chorus, Pollard's veered off into psychedelic waters, pulls out of that bit with a hammering rhythmic precision that places it closer to metal (which of course it isn't). Other highlights range from understated psychedelic whimsy of the type Robyn Hitchcock would envy (on "Brown Submarine," "North 11 A.M.," and the poppier "Two Girl Area," for instance) to the punkish variation on Bo Diddley's favorite beat that powers "Ate It Twice" - which, naturally sounds nothing like a song Bo Diddley would have written. Meanwhile, "Psyche Threat" finds him trading up his classic rocker's fascination with Who's Next for a rocker that channels the more ambitious spirit of The Who Sell Out, complete with horns. And when he hits his Big Star moment 11 tracks in, he opens wide and out spills "Soggy Beaver."

Standout tracks: "Winston's Atomic Bird," "Psyche Threat" A. WATT