Silverfish Trivia is a Pollard solo “mini-LP,” released independently while he was on Merge Records. It’s a string-laden, cinematic EP, containing three instrumentals and maintaining a predominantly slow tempo and moody atmosphere. This singular record in Pollard’s discography went through an interesting transformation from its original incarnation as a no-frills rock record. The early version is quite different from the final product, and some of its best songs were never released on a proper album, making it an especially interesting project to reconstruct.

In late 2006, Robert Pollard embarked on a solo tour in support of Normal Happiness, and he introduced a handful of new songs as being from his upcoming album. Of the six new songs played on tour, only two ultimately made the cut on the Silverfish Trivia EP. Around this time, an early version of the album called The Killers leaked online, as low-quality mp3s:

The Killers (Working Version #1)

  1. 3rd Generation Punks (Street Velocity)
  2. Met Her At A Séance
  3. You’ve Taken Me In
  4. The Killers
  5. Touched To Be Sure
  6. I’m Gonna Miss My Horse
  7. Be In The Wild Place
  8. Life Of A Wife
  9. Circle Saw Boys Club
  10. Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love
  11. Cats Love a Parade
  12. Piss Along You Bird

The Killers is fairly straightforward for a Pollard record. Following two ambitious, eclectic albums on Merge, this album does little to distinguish itself. It lacks the diversity and energy of those other albums; From a Compound Eye was a massive double-album, fully exploring all facets of Pollard’s songwriting (his famous four Ps: pop, punk, prog, and psych), while its follow-up Normal Happiness focused on short, bright pop songs with an experimental twist.

The Killers seems to have no particular focus. Although the songs are good, the album never finds its flow, and lacks the wholeness Pollard usually goes for. On a song-by-song basis, there are many winners, like the lovely acoustic numbers “You’ve Taken Me In” and “Life of a Wife,” as well as the poppy, surefire hits “I’m Gonna Miss My Horse” and “Piss Along You Bird” (the latter of which made an excellent final track). However, the abundance of mid-tempo rockers, like “Met Her at a Séance,” “Coast to Coast Carpet of Love” and the slow-building, “Touched to Be Sure,” gives the album a turgid, lumpy aura.

I believe that most of Pollard’s unreleased albums were aborted because they were flawed in some intangible way, and this is a prime example. The Killers sequence is fairly boring, despite some thrilling numbers like the multi-part opener “3rd Generation Punks” (later retitled “Street Velocity”) and the short, infectious “Be in the Wild Place.” To hear Bob tell it,

One time I finished an album and I went to this bar and there was a band playing. And there were all these middle-aged women up there dancing to it. I started kind of just daydreaming and gazing and second-guessing myself about what I just did. I was watching the dancers and was like, “Would they dance to my new record? Would they be dancing like that?” And the answer was yes. Yeah, they would dance to it. So, I got rid of the whole thing.

https://magnetmagazine.com/2014/09/19/robert-pollard-scalping-the-guru/

It doesn’t really sound like a bar band, but I can see his point. Maybe it’s just not weird enough. The subsequent versions of the album fared much better.

Gratification To Concrete (Working Version #2)

  1. Come Outside
  2. Street Velocity
  3. Circle Saw Boys Club
  4. You’ve Taken Me In
  5. Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love
  6. Life Of A Wife
  7. The Killers
  8. Touched To Be Sure
  9. Piss Along You Bird
  10. I’m Gonna Miss My Horse
  11. Met Her At A Séance
  12. Be In The Wild Place
  13. Waves, Etc.
  14. Cats Love A Parade
  15. Speak In Many Colors

What a difference a few tweaks makes! None of The Killers’ twelve songs were dropped, three instrumentals were added, and the track order was reconfigured. Suddenly, the melancholy, cinematic core of the album comes into focus. After a few more edits, Pollard ultimately jettisoned the rock and pop songs and exposed the core for itself, but this sequence makes the entire set flow much more smoothly.

At this point, the album’s bookends were firmly in place, a pair of instrumentals written by Pollard but played by a string quartet. “Come Outside” gets its beautiful melody from an old Acid Ranch tune, while “Speak in Many Colors” is a string arrangement of “You’ve Taken Me In,” a melodic folk-pop song that also appears on this sequence.

Pollard’s beautiful “Lie to the Rainbow” melody was turned into “Come Outside.”

A key difference from version #1 is that the sweeping, majestic “Circle Saw Boys Club” was moved from being late in the album to a prime number three spot. One of the best of this batch, the song was overshadowed following so many other ballad-like rockers and semi-rocking ballads. Here, “Circle Saw” is up front, the first ballad after the instrumental intro and the manic “Street Velocity.” This position allows it to stake its claim over the tone of the rest of the material. In an interview with Billboard, Pollard is quoted as describing the album (at the time of the interview it one of its 15-track phases) as “much more somber and strange.” “Circle Saw Boys Club” embodies that description perfectly, and it’s clear that it is the heart of Silverfish Trivia and integral to the finalization of the album.

The album’s other centerpiece is the 8-minute, multi-part “Cats Love a Parade.” Slated as the penultimate track across every sequence, it is now set up by a third instrumental, the guitar and keyboard “Waves, Etc.” “Cats” is a long, psychedelic suite comprised of multiple distinct parts (most of which were released in demo form on Psycho & the Birds releases). This long track would be hard to place on most albums; on The Killers, it sat awkwardly between a chugging rocker and jubilant pop song. Here, it is in much better company, and the instrumental bookends (mirroring the album itself) somehow enhance the epic weirdness.

Silverfish Trivia (Working Version #3)

  1. Come Outside
  2. Street Velocity
  3. Circle Saw Boys Club
  4. Wickerman Smile
  5. Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love
  6. Life Of A Wife
  7. The Killers
  8. Touched To Be Sure
  9. Piss Along You Bird
  10. Dream Lover 3 (Come Here Beautiful)
  11. Met Her At A Séance
  12. Be In The Wild Place
  13. Waves, Etc.
  14. Cats Love A Parade
  15. Speak In Many Colors

The third working version makes two substitutions. “You’ve Taken Me In,” a highlight of previous sequences, is dropped, although it still exists in instrumental form as the album closer “Speak in Many Colors.” It is replaced by “Wickerman Smile,” an otherworldly tune built around the slow, deliberate strums of an acoustic guitar and Pollard’s winning melody. “I’m Gonna Miss My Horse” is replaced by a song called “Dream Lover 3,” another haunting acoustic track.

Both of the new songs were recorded on a boombox and then overdubbed with some subtle keyboard to add atmosphere. The simple, intimate arrangements and the tone of Pollard’s voice on these tracks makes them quite remarkable, among the best of this era. Although “Dream Lover” (subsequently retitled “Come Here Beautiful”) did not make the final cut, these two tracks indicate that Pollard was narrowing down the desired tone of the album, deleting a couple of pop songs to make way for something a bit more mysterious and mystical.

Silverfish Trivia (Final version)

  1. Come Outside
  2. Circle Saw Boys Club
  3. Wickerman Smile
  4. Touched To Be Sure
  5. Waves, Etc.
  6. Cats Love A Parade
  7. Speak In Many Colors

Ruthlessly, Pollard makes cuts left and right, whittling the album down to its core, using “Circle Saw Boys Club” as a guiding voice. The end result is like a movie soundtrack. Although the songs that were cut were largely strong, the released version of the album stands out in a couple of ways. One, it’s rare to get a Pollard album that has such a sustained somber tone throughout its duration. Two, the predominance of string-laden instrumentals across its short length (22 minutes total) make it a unique EP with little to compare it to in Pollard’s wider discography. It was self-released quietly between bigger, flashier albums and occupies its own little corner of the Pollard universe.

When asked about why the full-length Silverfish Trivia was scrapped, Rich Turiel, who ran Pollard’s record label at the time, explained,

I think it was a few things with the biggest one being there was so much time in between the time that it was recorded and it was going to be released that Bob kept writing and kept wondering if the newer stuff he was writing was better than the stuff he recorded. Bob always gets that itch to record something he just wrote that he thinks is great. So when you have songs like Current Desperation and Miles Under The Skin and Rud Fins (you’ll understand this part soon) sitting and waiting to be recorded it is hard to sit on that!

(From a post on the Disarm The Settlers message board, 5/17/2007)

In light of that explanation, it is easy to see why Silverfish Trivia the album was canned in favor of a low-key EP. In hindsight, the album tread water a bit, so Pollard made the right choice in keeping the most singular, interesting bits and distributing the rest across other albums or as B-sides. Silverfish ceded the spotlight to the newer, better, material that ultimately yielded two bolder albums, Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love and Standard Gargoyle Decisions. 

The leftover songs were scattered across a variety of releases. Three made it to Pollard’s next two albums, while five more ended up as B-sides to singles released from those albums. “Piss Along You Bird” is the only one of the five B-sides to see wide release on CD/digital, as part of Suitcase 3.  The two cut from version #2 became bonus tracks on the Crickets compilation.

Leftovers

  • I’m Gonna Miss My Horse (Crickets)
  • You’ve Taken Me In (Crickets)
  • Life Of A Wife (Coast to Coast Carpet of Love)
  • The Killers (Standard Gargoyle Decisions)
  • Come Here Beautiful (Standard Gargoyle Decisions)
  • Piss Along You Bird (Suitcase 3) 

Released as vinyl-only B-sides on the Happy Jack Rock Records Singles Series:

  • Street Velocity
  • Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love
  • Met Her At A Séance
  • Be In The Wild Place

My preferred reconstruction is a playlist of version #3 that appends “I’m Gonna Miss My Horse” and “You’ve Taken Me In,” either to the end or just before the album-closing trifecta. Unfortunately, neither Crickets nor the Happy Jack B-Sides are streaming, so you might have to do some digging to reconstruct this album.

Purchase Crickets at Rockathon (you definitely need it)

Purchase Silverfish Trivia EP and Happy Jack Rock Records Singles

Appendix: Freak Anthem

Pollard revisited the Silverfish Trivia era in 2020 for the HOT FREAKS email subscription service, sharing the both the demos and studio versions for an album called Freak Anthem. It even came with the cool cover art seen above. Even better, it introduced a couple new songs to the Silverfish Trivia era! Previously known only as a Bob-and-guitar demo on Suitcase 3, “I Share a Rhythm” was written with this batch of songs but apparently not given the studio treatment during this time, as it appears on Freak Anthem only in demo form. Perhaps inspired by its inclusion on HOT FREAKS, Guided by Voices brought the song back for a studio version on their 2021 album It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!

  1. Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love
  2. Speak Again (“You’ve Taken Me In” with strings)
  3. Piss Along You Bird
  4. Life Of A Wife
  5. I’m Gonna Miss My Horse
  6. Circle Saw Boys Club
  7. I Share A Rhythm
  8. Met Her At A Séance
  9. Slow Hamilton
  10. Be In The Wild Place
  11. Street Velocity
  12. Touched To Be Sure

Also new to this set is “Slow Hamilton,” already known as a standout track from Coast to Coast Carpet of Love. Despite sharing a handful of tracks with canonical albums, Freak Anthem serves as a satisfying final resting place for this set of tunes that fell through the tracks. It’s a good listen that once again improves on the original The Killers sequence.

Did you know that silverfish have been around for 400 million years, predating the dinosaurs?

This article was originally posted on shitcanned.wordpress.com in 2012, and was updated in 2025.