What Was Properly Dead

Robert Pollard “I Can See”

If you’ve heard enough of Robert Pollard’s music, the guitar parts in “I Can See” will immediately ring out with familiarity. You’ve heard this before, though not quite — it’s just this distinctly Pollard-y guitar style, both in the melody picked out on the verses, and the rhythm strummed on the chorus as the song shifts into more dramatic territory. The vocal tics are familiar too, but it comes together feeling more fresh than a great deal of his recent material. Pollard is prolific to the point that his output seems more rooted in a need to keep producing than a desire to communicate anything in particular, but he can still pull off a song like this, where an appealing tune and song structure connects with a gentle emotional epiphany that comes across as earnest and true.

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