Mars Classroom – The New Theory Of Everything – Happy Jack – HJRR26 - ****

The quirky indie-pop Gary Waleik penned for Big Dipper was incinerated in an early '90s major label backdraught.
The pathologically prolific post-mod Robert Pollard's fourth album of the year siphons eleven plangent tunes from this slumbering giant, over which the former Guided By Voices front-man free-associates his oddly affecting shred and stick poetics and classic rock in miniature melodies.

The cautiously pretty title track is the most effective indie-rock earworm of the year so far; Wiry post-punk meets skinny-tie new wave on Dr Newpile; and the delightfully unresolved I Wish You Were Young closes the album in a spiralling stasis.

(9/4/11)