ROBERT POLLARD
NORMAL HAPPINESS
MERGE

Weekly Dig
By Bill Dvorak

Robert Pollard is frickin’ unstoppable lately—you’d have to reinstate Prohibition to shut him up. Unfortunately, doing that would spoil Normal Happiness for the rest of us, as its batch of hyper-prototypical Pollard-brand psychedelicate pop songs are best savored in the state of mind Bob best likes to perform in—i.e., shit-wasted. As per almost everything Pollard has ever released (in and out of GBV), Normal Happiness is a mixture of pop masterpieces (“Supernatural Car Love” and “Rhoda Rhoda” stand out) and utter throwaway tracks. It’s no longer a matter of quality versus quantity with Pollard—he’s exhausted them both, and it still sounds good.