Zoom

Following the breakup of Guided by Voices at the end of 2004, Robert Pollard's first release was a comedy album culled from his beer-powered stage banter (talk about your auspicious debuts!), but the brief EP Zoom marked his first public musical statement in the post-GBV epoch. Given Pollard's long-standing habit of tossing off pop songs with almost alarming speed, Zoom is a predictably casual four-song affair, with cryptic found recordings taking up the spaces between songs. There's a nice, slightly jazzy guitar instrumental ("Dr. Fuji and Henry Charleston [Zoom Variation]"), a not-quite-finished-sounding acoustic number ("Have a Day Mr. Clay"), and two good if not great pop tunes in the traditional Pollard manner ("Catherine From Mid-October" and "Zoom [It Happens All Over the World]"). In short, this represents the newly solo Pollard sounding pretty much the same way he always has — which, given the ups and downs of his back catalog (especially the Fading Captain material), could be a bad thing as easily as a good thing. For fans only.