Robert Pollard's new solo album "Mouseman Cloud" shows the Guided By Voices frontman in a playful and spontaneous mood. This is a record by a guy who just wants to rock, and not have to worry about how that rock will be received by anyone other than himself. While the songs here are not a world away from anything you'll find on GBV's "Let's Go Eat The Factory", the emphasis on "Mouseman Cloud" is on wordplay rather than melody, on unkempt exploration rather than trad song structure. A lot of the tracks sound as if they started as lyrics - even poetry - first, and were fit around the sounds, which is not an uncommon way for Pollard to work, but the album's gleeful verbosity could be interpreted as the work of a man who's maybe been feeling the ... read more