Elephant Jokes

Guided by Voices may be a distant memory in 2009, but Robert Pollard isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Elephant Jokes arrives just as his other “bands“ Boston Spaceships and Circus Devils continue their prodigious output. These 22 tracks are Pollard continuing his foray into whatever amuses him. “Johnny Optimist” begins things with a tough classic rock FM radio guitar alongside Pollard’s own leisurely, mocking tone. “Symbols and Heads,” “Epic Heads,” and “Stiff Me” churn with Pollard’s by now standard guitar-based stream-of-consciousness pop. It’s all a bit exhausting at nearly two dozen tracks, but Pollard rarely dwells and the use of mellotron and other psychedelic touches make everything sound hopelessly wistful and retro and bizarrely modern in that beautifully arbitrary, detached way. Pollard’s albums are like a personal iPod set on random. Find the ballad (“Desiring”), the pop hook (“Hippsville (Where the Frisbees Fly Forever),” “Jimmy”) and the space jam (“Tattered Lily,” “Architectural Nightmare Man”) and prepare for take-off.