Isolation Drills and Robert Pollard’s album w/ Doug Gillard (Speak Kindly of your Volunteer Fire Dept) are the most consistently brilliant and curiously overlooked albums of the late 90s/early 00s. I guess the problem with being prolific is that your standout work gets buried into the mix.

Its not lo-fi enough for some and a cop-out for others in aiming for the pop hit (“Chasing Heather Crazy”,”Glad Girls”) that they’d had failed to get with “Teenage FBI”. For me, it’s power pop nirvana – as if they’re dusting off the cobwebs, ready for the big time (that never quite came).

Lyrically, Bob has never been more wonderfully oblique (“The Enemy, “Pivotal Film”). Its certainly in my top 5 of the century so far – can’t imagine it never being – whatever comes next.

Thanks so much for your great choice.

Honestly, since becoming a GBV fan five or so years ago, the GBV/Pollard output, old and new, sort of blurs for me—it runs together. That doesn’t mean I don’t think there are excellent records, I just forget *which one exactly* was the excellent record. (If that makes any sense.) Don’t get me wrong—I love Pollard and made it a point to play a GBV song every segment of my erstwhile radio show, but I just get overwhelmed sometimes. Which is why I particularly appreciate this review. Nice to have someone bring notice to something I might’ve lost in the shuffle.