The day Robert Pollard stops making music is the day Hell freezes over. The Guided By Voices singer and songwriter has been at it for over four decades now, and his pace hasn’t slowed—if anything, it’s picked up. More impressive than even that, though, is just how consistent the beloved rock band has been throughout the years. They have a formula and, goddamn, have they perfected it. But that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to explore. Take Crawlspace of the Pantheon, the Dayton group’s 44th album (give or take; the exact count seems to depend on who you ask), which is slated to drop on May 29: compared to other recent entries into Pollard’s vast discography, Crawlspace is considerably more lyrical, more intent on content—there’s a strange thread of semi-autobiography running through it, pulled both from the band’s own history and from that of the fictional band “Ivory Gate,” a GBV doppelganger of Pollard’s creation.
This record comes, of course, only about half a year after GBV’s last album, Thick Rich and Delicious, which was released in October 2025. Both albums were recorded live in-studio with the current lineup of Pollard, Doug Gillard, Kevin March, Mark Shue, and Bobby Bare Jr.—although Pollard hints that GBV’s next record, which will presumably drop later this year, might take a different tack.
Today, we’re premiering the third single off Crawlspace of the Pantheon, “When You’re My Clown (Nothing Happens),” which serves up three minutes of fuzzed-out rock, a calm surface with shredded chords and taut drums and thudding bass pushing it forward, before flipping into a somewhat brighter tenor as Pollard’s repeats the title phrase. The story behind the song—or at least its name—is an odd one. As the man himself tells it: “A fan that I used to know, who became a good friend, moved to Dayton for a while and ended up leaving after a few years because he stayed out too late and got in trouble with the police a couple of times. Some one asked him about why he moved and he said he was tired of being my clown. The thing is when he was with me we never got in trouble. Nothing ever happened until I went home to bed and he continued to party all night.”
We spoke with Pollard about the new record, fake band photos, the joys of (bad) record collecting, and why getting older doesn’t mean the music has to. Check out the Q&A and “When You’re My Clown (Nothing Happens)” below.
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Paste Magazine: You said in an interview last December that your next album was going to be called Lost In the Sun, which is, of course, the opening track of this record. What made you decide to change the name to Crawlspace Of the Pantheon?
Robert Pollard: Crawlspace Of the Pantheon was actually the original title and I changed it to Lost In the Sun when I heard an announcer on television say an outfielder lost the ball in the sun. Then I saw somewhere there was already a song or album or movie or something called “Lost In the Sun” so I switched back to Crawlspace which I decided I liked better anyway. I did obviously, however, keep “Lost In the Sun” for the opening track.
The phrase “crawlspace of the Pantheon” is such a specific image—not the Pantheon itself, but the crawlspace beneath it. You’ve called it self-deprecating, but it also implies you’re playing a part in the foundation, in holding the whole thing up. Is that tension intentional? How do you think about where GBV fits in the larger story of rock music at this point?
No, I didn’t see it as holding the Pantheon up. More like being accepted but given a very small section which would still be perfectly fine and very flattering. Just being a small part of the overall greatness of the history of rock. We fit in maybe because we embrace and encapsulate a lot of good elements that go into the art of such an incredible and diverse genre of music history.
You’ve compared the connection between Thick Rich and Delicious and Crawlspace to the connection between albums like Same Place the Fly Got Smashed and Mag Earwhig. When did you realize these two records were conceptually linked, and what’s the thread that connects them?
I don’t remember saying Thick Rich and Delicious was conceptual, but maybe I did. Crawlspace seems to have some sort of conceptual thread running through it and could be construed as being slightly autobiographical. At least maybe about the adventures and misadventures of a fictitious band that represents Guided By Voices which I depicted on the inside sleeve as Ivory Gate. It’s a really cool photo from a 1971 college yearbook of a group of students with great hair and clothes. They’re mentioned in the song “Lost In the Sun.” I’ve used pictures representative of fake bands a lot of times before. I love to do that and it’s actually how Guided By Voices originated. We weren’t even real. We became real, like the story of Pinocchio.
You’ve said you were more diligent with the lyrics on this one and that the tone is more serious than on other recent records. Did the seriousness of the subject matter demand more careful writing, or did the careful writing pull you toward more serious territory?
I wanted to make the songs more emotionally tied together giving it a more conceptual feel. In order to come closer to achieving that effect, I figured I should really work on the phrasing and images in the lyrics. The listener can play along and try to create an overall picture or not. It can also just be a batch of individual songs with no connection to one another at all.
Like Thick Rich and Delicious, you decided to go with a live, in-studio approach for the recording of this record. Do you see GBV continuing with this approach for a while, or trying something new?
It was pretty much an identical process. We’re going to go away from that method for the next one. It’ll be pretty much a democratic approach with everyone, including Travis, playing everything. I want it to be less heavy with a lot of diversity between songs, types of songs and the way they sound.
You’ve said that making music and making collages are pretty much the same thing to you. Is there a song on Crawlspace that started as something closer to a collage—pieces stuck together that weren’t originally meant to go with each other?
Yeah, I don’t know exactly which without going through the songs, but I’m sure there are a lot of things pieced together. I do that on every album. I always move things around just like making collages. One example on this album that comes to mind is the middle waltz section of “Advance Without Dropping.” That was originally a completely different song. It worked very well, I think.
In a previous interview, you mentioned that you feel too old to get onstage anymore, so touring is largely out of the question. Did knowing the album wouldn’t really be performed live (and thus wouldn’t need to be recreated onstage) influence the writing or recording process at all?
No, as a matter of fact someone complained to me recently, “Why are you writing all of these songs that would work so well live and then not play them live?” It seems a shame, I guess, but that’s my decision. Just use your imagination and when you do, envision us to be in our twenties.
There’s a version of aging in rock where people slow down or mellow out, and then there’s whatever you’re doing, which seems like the opposite. Do you feel like the work has changed as you’ve gotten older, or at least the expectation placed on it?
I don’t see why you have to have an older perspective completely just because you’ve aged. Sure, there should be maturity through experience alone but I like to keep some of the playfulness and enthusiasm of youth around. Keep it somewhat artful and surreal. It’s rock. Rock started out young and now it seems to have gotten old but it doesn’t have to. I don’t quite understand why a lot of my favorite artists from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s who are still around can’t or won’t write good songs anymore.
You release albums nigh constantly—is there ever a tension between that forward momentum and wanting a record to have its moment? Or does the volume of work take the pressure off any individual release?
I want each record to be as good as it can be and appreciated by as many people as possible but once it’s finished that’s it. It’s a wrap. It’s a film. It’s a movie. You move on to the next one. When you’ve made 140 albums, it’s difficult and maybe a little unfair to nitpick, compare and overly scrutinize. If you don’t like it, check out the next one, which will probably not be very far down the road. I write a batch of songs, give them a package, and put it out. That’s how it works.
The story behind “When You’re My Clown (Nothing Happens)” is a somewhat funny one: your friend moved away from Dayton claiming he was tired of being your clown, when really he was the one getting himself into trouble after you’d gone home. What made that story stick with you enough to turn it into a song?
The song doesn’t literally follow the actual experience with my friend. I just used his comment as inspiration to write lyrics for the song which was initially actually something entirely different. I had the title and I liked the way it sounded starting the chorus. I think in sticking with the conceptual thing, it’s more about a band. The Ivory Gate maybe.
Why was “When You’re My Clown” the right song to close the album for you?
It’s just up. It sounds like the song playing over the end credits of a movie. It gives it an uplifting or happy ending kind of feel.
And finally, you’re known to have a massive record collection, including multiple copies of the same titles (apparently, you have eight copies of In the Court of the Crimson King)—you’ll buy a great record every time you see it. What’s the most recent record you bought that you already owned, and where’d you find it?
It’s the lone LP by a band called White Horse. It’s from, I don’t know, the mid-to-late ‘70s or early ‘80s, but it sucks. I bought it originally because it features Billy Nichols, who has written some very good songs and he has a lot of his songs on White Horse. He was, or maybe still is, a friend and associate of Pete Townshend. His killer song “Forever’s No Time At All” is so good Pete included it on his first solo album Who Came First, even though Pete doesn’t even perform on the song. Anyway, I personally think the White Horse album is not good. It was his attempt at cashing in on a major label. I have it in my collection, but I saw another copy for only four dollars at Grimey’s record store in Nashville, so I bought it because it’s Billy Nichols and it’s only four dollars. It’s the cost of a beer. When I put it on the shelves with the other copy I found, I already had two copies. So now I’ve got three copies of a not very good album. I just like going to record stores and buying records.
Casey Epstein-Gross is Associate Editor at Paste and is based in New York City. Follow her on X (@epsteingross) or email her at [email protected].
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