AMG Review of Bubble

Mark Deming
All Music Guide

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is a major fan of Guided by Voices (he wrote the forward to James Greer's biography of the group), so it's no great surprise that he asked former GBV leader Robert Pollard to contribute some songs to his 2005 independent film #Bubble. Six tunes Pollard gave to Soderbergh for the project are featured on this EP, and while they were recorded in the manner of most of Pollard's recent solo work -- with Pollard handing vocals and acoustic guitar and Todd Tobias handling the rest of the instruments through the magic of multi-tracking -- the sound of these tunes in very much in line with the salad days of Guided by Voices, only minus the sloppy lo-fi production that was one of their sonic trademarks. There are a couple of instrumentals on board that boast classic hard pop melodies, and the vocals numbers fuse offer more muscular variations on the same themes, with tough guitar lines and no-nonsense vocal delivery from Pollard. Featuring six songs and less than 12 minutes of music, Bubble is by no means a major project, but anyone who follows Pollard's work will find this a short but sweet slice of what the guy does best.