Robert Pollard Is Off To Business

On Off to Business, he accomplishes another step toward canonization, making a late-period album that removes any semblance of what made him great in the first place and is a largely uninspired trip down memory lane.

Despite the invocation of those crusty legends [Guided by Voices], Business is no lo-fi throwback.

Pollard has long been in the business of writing songs, but here he seems invigorated; and for the first time in a long while, his business is mixed with pleasure.

Off to Business--released eponymously by Guided By Voices, Inc.--is the ultimate product of this trend: an album full of ebullient mid-tempo rockers, ebullient pretty guitar parts, and ebullient power drum fills.

Although Business ultimately ranks as yet another less-than-legendary offering from a living indie legend, its shortcomings are much more nuanced than typical Pollard releases.

His voice is a delightful constant through good writing and bad. The propeller-arms guitar rock supplied by Pollard's various flesh-and-blood bandmates tend to provide just-off-enough accompaniment, but Tobias mucks it all up.

Pollard fleshes out his vaguely familiar melodies with inventive, unpredictably expansive arrangements. [July 2008, p.108]

Robert Pollard breaks with several of his own traditions--fewer songs (only 10), and of those, eight break the 2-and-a-half-minute barrier. [Aug 2008, p.163]

Off to Business doesn't break much new ground for Pollard, but what is different is that he's clearly put a great deal more thought and care into this disc than anything he's put out since From a Compound Eye, and the result is an album that sounds like an album rather than the latest bunch of tunes Pollard banged together, and that makes all the difference in the world.