Robert Pollard, former frontman for indie-rock heroes Guided By Voices, has heard all the criticism. His songs are too short, and just when he latches onto a strong hook, he lets it go off into the ether.

That's not going to be the case on Robert Pollard Is Off To Business, his umpteenth solo project, and what promises to be his most significant release in 2008. With GBV, songs like "My Valuable Bow Hunting Knife" and their classic "I Am A Scientist" flew by in about a minute, minute and a half, two minutes — something like that. And albums had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-25 songs. Pollard chalks that up to his impatience as a songwriter.

Busier than ever, with an art book called "Town of Mirrors: The Reassembled Imagery of Robert Pollard" that features his the wild collages (pictured at right) he's been making for years, Pollard stretches out Robert Pollard Is Off To Business, producing only a compact 10 clocking in at 35 minutes of powerhouse rock guitar riffs, pristine production from recording partner Todd Tobias and Pollard's rough-around-the-edges vocals.

He explains the change in strategy.

"It's a departure," notes Pollard. "I purposely took a different angle on this record. I wanted to be a little bit more disciplined with this one, especially with my songwriting approach and rather than just kind of like going with the spontaneous way I go about writing songs and keeping them that way, I want to hammer at them a little bit and make them longer. And I'm going to do multiple verses and choruses, and kind of like work on finales, where different parts of the song come back in at the end and kind of overlap and make sort of in the style of the early- to mid-'70s kind of a classic-rock style record and then make it more compact — obviously at 10 songs, longer songs."

He's expecting to get flak for that.

"Some of the criticism, which I really don't listen to, is that as soon as I get into a hook, its gone and I don't repeat it and it's gone," explains Pollard. "My comeback for that is, you've got to listen to the record again if you want to get the hook again. My thing this time was, well if that's kind of the criticism, then I'm going to give it to them this time, and I will repeat the hook many, many times in the song. So, I kind of hammer you over the head with it ... there's enough to grab onto, and you know, my short thing, my short-song fixation is kind of like ... it's just my impatience in writing. I just like to write a lot of songs, and [when] it's good enough, I'm ready to go onto the next thing. On this one, I felt that I should be a little more disciplined as a songwriter, and so I did, and so, it's like 10 songs, and it's out there right now. A few people have gotten early copies and listened to it, and so far, the feedback's been pretty good. But there will be some people [who] have a problem with the short songs, and now, I'm sure there'll be people who have a problem with the long songs."

For more on what Bob's up to these days, visit http://robertpollard.net/news.html. And be sure to dig back and see what all the fuss was with Guided By Voices, one of the most collectible indie-rock bands of all time; their brand of catchy, quirky, British-Invasion inspired rock was a shining light in the '90s, and one of their early records that went for four figures was mentioned in a Market Watch in one of 2007's Goldmine issues (I couldn't find which one, but I know it was in there).