Oh, to wield the power of the prolific Robert Pollard. Who among us has not, on some occasion, wished aloud that he had sung a certain sweet melody, played on a particular record, or written an unforgettable tune? To laymen, dreams like that amount to little more than a wish in one hand and shit in the other. Not so for big poppa Pollard, a man whose reputation as the grandfather of indie rock allows him mighty perks unimaginable to the rest of us. Who else on the planet could convince a band to erase a record's existing vocals so that he, drunken savant that he is, may reinterpret them as he sees fit? Nobody, that's who.
One of the strangest records ever to have trawled its way out of the bottomless Pollard canon, Beard of Lightening takes Bob's trademark faceless collaboration technique to new heights of retroactive whimsy. Often cited by Pollard as one of his favorite bands ever, defunct NYC art-punk trio Phantom Tollbooth originally released this album under the name Power Toy back in the Homestead heyday of 1988. Apparently the trio echoed Pollard's sentiment, and with a bit of prodding from Off Records honcho Chris Slusarenko, they wholeheartedly agreed to strip Power Toy of its vocals and allow Pollard to craft new lyrics and vocal melodies atop what is considered by many to be the group's defining hour.
As with much of the Pollard universe, Beard of Lightning is a record that really shouldn't work, but gets by on raw gusto and the man's indomitable spirit. In many ways, songs like "Mascara Snakes" and "A Good Looking Death" are related to Bob's work with Ohioan oddballs Circus Devils; their disjointed cadences and scrawled guitars lay a rickety foundation for stream-of-consciousness lyrics and melodies so extraordinarily simple you'd swear Pollard promised the devil his soul in return for them. But crafting winning melodies atop such a dissonant squall is no easy task, and the sneaky extrapolations of liquid melody injected into "Gratification to Concrete" and "Atom Bomb Professor" are solid proof that they simply couldn't have come from a mind any less twisted than Pollard's.
Typical Pollard-related furor aside, the three members of Phantom Tollbooth (Dave Rick, Gerard Smith and Jon Coates) deserve ample credit for the disc's success. Upon its release in 1988, Power Toy was instantly hailed as a groundbreaking fusion of dissonant post-punk polemics and scathing art-house contempt. While Pollard's pitch was likely too good to pass up, you can't help but think that Rick, Smith and Coates have dreams of a Phantom Tollbooth renaissance. It's not unreasonably, either; with so many other "classic" acts recently returned to the playing field in fine form, you could do a lot worse than to revisit this seminal yet short-lived group's canon.
Pollard has made his career by dredging elements of unfashionability into his alluring pop stew, and this is a logical extension of his modus operandi. It's a bold -- if not downright arrogant -- move, and certainly not the sort of approach we'd like to see develop into a trend, but he and Phantom Tollbooth pull it off with skill and aplomb.
