The Takeovers are made up of Robert Pollard and Chris Slusarenko, both of ex-Guided By Voices fame.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking after reading that first sentence: “Another week, another Robert Pollard release. So what?”. Stop thinking that, because their new album Bad Football is a straight-up perfect rock and roll record. I’m not just saying that as a die-hard Pollard fan, either… I’m saying it as a fan of the entire genre of rock music.

Bad Football merges the most of the best qualities of latter-day GBV and Pollard’s increasingly experimental solo output. Think “Sleep Over Jack” from 2004’s Half Smiles Of The Decomposed merged with a really fun song like “Dancing Girls And Dancing Men” from Pollard’s double epic From A Compound Eye, sprinkle in the looseness and fun of, say… “Hot Freaks”? Yeah, that’s The Takeovers.

The new Takeovers platter is a miles ahead of their already-brilliant 2004 Turn To Red, and that’s mostly thanks to all of Football’s songs seeming more fully realized than the minute-long snippets found spread out over Red’s already scant thirty-minute running time. And while that made each full-on song on the debut feel that much more monumental - I mean, seriously… how are “Be It Not For The Serpentine Rain Dodger” and “Bullfighter’s Cut” not recognized as the indie rock anthems they were born to be? - it also made the listener salivate so heavily for more that the year-long wait between albums has felt utterly excruciating.

Any album that kicks off with a song whose main refrain is “This form of suicide’s not quick enough / What else ya got?” and a crankin’ guitar solo courtesy of Stephen Malkmus has a lot to live up to, right? No worries there. When you’ve got a genius like Pollard at the helm, even songs that seem slight on first listen deliver the goods. For example, if the track “Father’s Favorite Temperature” were in anyone else’s hands, it would have come off like any ol’ bar band tune you’ve ever heard. Of course, Uncle Bob turns it into a lift-your-beer-and-sing-it-out-loud anthem coated in creamy vocal harmonies.

Other highlights include - but are not limited to - the pedal-to-the floorboard rocker “Pretty Not Bad”, which comes equipped with a spoken midsection reminiscent of Turn To Red’s “Fairly Blacking Out”. You’ll also marvel at the pure pop perfection contained in the four-minute “My Will”. It’s one of those tunes that make your everyday songwriter want to throw their notebook full of silly rhyme-dictionary-aided scribbles out the window and give up their craft altogether.

Of course, it couldn’t be a Pollard release without a little bit of weirdness, and that’s delivered in the form of “The Jester Of Helpmeat” and “Music For Us”, respectively. The former is a short blast that builds and ends too quickly, centering on a single lyric: “The jester of Helpmeat is not fucking around”. The latter is just… woah. It opens as a piano-driven tune that’s almost reminiscent of Randy Newman, I’ll dare say, but quickly explodes into a shouted, catchy chorus of “Ant hills! Foot hills! / Dance to the music for us”. “Music” may also containe some of the most wonderfully inebriated Bob vocals ever captured on an official release, and longtime fans know that’s a major statement.

So, yes. Much like their debut Turn To Red, Bad Football is a fantastic record made by two guys that seem bent on only making the types of records that they want to hear. And thanks to that lack of compromise and purity of vision, it’s a very original and striking record. Most importantly, the album deserves to be heard by everyone, not just the small-yet-rabid Cult Of Pollard. Unfortunately, it probably won’t travel far outside of the GBV circles, and it’ll end up sitting alongside masterpieces that the general public hasn’t heard of his, like Mist King Urth, Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department and that devastatingly good Moping Swans record.

There’s a solution I’d like to propose, though. What if Pollard shocked everyone by revoking his retirement from touring long enough to do a two month tour with Slusarenko, performing nothing but Takeovers material? The press would be forced to cover it since Bob shows are scarce as of late, and in turn it’d get people to focus on the band as it’s own entity instead of being looked at as “just another Guided By Voices offshoot”. Besides that, these songs are seriously begging to be played live, people. It’s just an idea, and probably an impossible one at that, but Bad Football deserves better treatment than living and dying in obscurity. Until then, all we can do is keep endlessly wearing out these vinyl grooves and pushing it upon any fan of rock and roll you come in contact with. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the public will finally come to Bob instead of vice versa. It’s about fucking time they did, anyways.

The Takeovers - Father’s Favorite Temperature.mp3
The Takeovers - My Will.mp3
The Takeovers - Molly & Zack.mp3

Order your copy of Bad Football from Off Records now, or face trying to snag an overpriced one on ebay later.
Stream some tunes and be friends with The Takeovers on MySpace!