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| Photo by Donald Lee |
Last year, Boston indie rock staples Big Dipper released their first record in 22 years, Big Dipper Crashes On the Platinum Planet; I discovered them when one of my music podcasts featured “Robert Pollard” a few weeks ago. A tongue-in-cheek cheerful pop song about the travails of being a songwriter, it pays ode to Pollard’s ability to churn out huge numbers of songs, and takes pot-shots at Big Dipper songwriter’s Gary Waliek’s own inability to finish a song. It’s part tribute, part self-effacing shrug, part record industry critcism, and it reminded me of nothing so much as it reminded me of the Replacements’ “Alex Chilton”.
Which is, after all, one of my favorite songs, played by one of my favorite bands, about one of my heroes. None of that applies in this case — I’d never heard of Big Dipper before this, and I’m not actually a huge Guided By Voices fan — but I still love the hell out of this song. Sometimes you just need some hand-clapping sunny mouthy indie pop on a spring day, and this is for today.