Eddie Vedder, frontman of Pearl Jam (whom Pollard has opened for) issued a statement about the album, stating "It sounds to me like Robert Pollard uncharacteristically took ten years to make this one. He will tell you otherwise, but I don't believe him. It's too fucking good. If it were any other group this would be seen as their masterpiece. I think for Bob it's just another good day of weaving words into a kaleidoscope of one of a kind, thought-provoking perspectives".

Will you and Robert Pollard just get a room already?

They did. You haven't heard that story?

Agreed. I prefer We All Got Out of the Army and ...Off to Business to this one.

You're the one stoned.

I do like this album -- he's been consistently brilliant with his lyrics/turn of phrase on these later albums -- but "Big Time Wrestling" instantly places the record on a second or third tier. I'm sure we can get very GBV dorky on here, with charts and graphs and calculated GBV-fan metacritic scores. For the last two years I've gone back to my GBV junkie ways -- a lot of it has to do with Pollard's return to form.

The reunion announcement has just fueled it -- and made me realize how superior those songs are in comparison to the "now." Though I do consider the last GBV album -- Half Smiles -- my third or fourth favorite. Leading me to believe tons of that record was made/written back in the day.

I felt the same way about "Big Time Wrestling" on the first few listens. That song and "It's News" are definitely the weaker tracks. "Moses" plays out far better as a complete body of work than WAGOTA, though, for me. Moses' best songs, "It's a Pleasure Being You", "Arrows and Ballons", "Each is Good in his own House", "The Weekly Crow, "Moses on a Snail" happen to outrank the best of the other recent records in my mind and will probably appear on set lists much more often years from now (I think time will show that this is true- and, yes, Bob agrees). However, I could listen to "Silk Rotor" and "Your Rate Will Never Go Up" about once an hour, for now and it would take a while to wear them out.

It's all a big crapshoot.

I'm also of the rare opinion that Universal Truths and Cycles is one Bob's best, too. Very under-rated.