A Close Strangeness: Mars Classroom

Back Cover of "New Theory..."

MARS CLASSROOM - THE NEW THEORY OF EVERYTHING

In the basement with the windows open. Breeze in, Pollard out. Awaiting accolades from the neighborhood. Hey, I've unfrozen your time! Gather at the curbs and open your own windows! The Teacher is back in the classroom!

"The New Theory of Everything", the 28th(?) Pollard-related release of 2011, exudes a close strangeness. Like an android of your best friend. Like a grape in the dark.

17 years of Robert Pollard finds me in his Mars Classroom, advancing but never graduating. Failing gym to stay behind. Missing the bus for a ride home.

Pollard introduced a new theory of rock and roll. Here I am growing older, but there's no oldies station for me or my gang. Christ, I stood on line for 20 minutes on Record Store Day only to find the vinyl of "Sing For Your Meat" was sold-out It's not so much I grow with the music, but rather that I grow and my receptors pick up new signals from the music.

Pollard turns concrete (not just "the" concrete) into ice cream; anthems into epiphanies. Pulls dream into poems, yanking them down like heavy drapes. There's paneling and pool tables behind his lyrics -- I don't know how else to describe it. "Cassavetes to your Mia Farrow" means something to me. And it means something else. Then something else.

I never hear anything elitist in Pollard's music. Maybe knowing a songwriter's background informs the impression. But it's music for the common man. Surreal folk music? I don't know. I just know that it's the greatest music I've ever heard.

I dreamed I drove a bookmobile selling only Pollard's music. He collaged the entire truck! Driving down the shady streets, the rooftop speaker played...but, ah! I woke up. What would it have been? What could it have been?

Waleik & Beerman twist the reins of the chariot around their wrists and turn the race into a fury. Pollard's the horses. The origin of the chariot is unfathomable, but only responds to the pull of these three men.

There's math in there somewhere; physics, I suppose; and the daredevil dive of any artist who shares the city with the phoenix.