Too bad they ll miss the most mature, finely realized work of his 16-year career. GBV s latest LP, Isolation Drills , is not only the most deeply satisfying, least scattershot, most infectious and ultimately addictive GBV LP, but it s also the best LP of this young year at precisely the time when he s becoming overlooked. Not that Pollard cares. This feels even more remarkable as Pollard and his drinking buddies ferry me around to various bars on empty Dayton streets and in the completely unremarkable outskirts of Northridge, where he lives. For every church along the long roads where every business is separated from the next by a parking lot, there s also a strip bar.
People are lonely, bored and intoxicated, looking for anything to do.
Clearly, his bottomless coffee pot of melody, hooks, tunes, solid guitar riffs, and can t-miss choruses came out of the sort of abject hunger that comes from being zealous. Sitting on bar stools in an old bowling alley as two men next to us hit golf balls into a video screen of a real course, Pollard explains why he can write so prolifically, how he came to be The Lord of Overstock, and others his age from hipper places still can t touch him. But see, those people didn t make it a religion like I did. I made rock my religion, that was my church. I said, I love it so much, and I can t get enough of it, so I need to write.