Head of the class – Joshua Polk shines on new album Beauty School Dropouts

It’s close to 8:30 p.m. at Chelsea’s Café. Joshua Polk is clutching a beer, and bobbing his head back and forth. His restless energy is outmatching mine, even though I’ve just gulped an eight-ounce Red Bull.

That unwillingness to sit still has permeated into Polk’s creative energy.

Since returning to Baton Rouge, Polk has brought his restless spirit to the Baton Rouge rock music scene, playing in bands such as Dead Animals and Glitchell.

In April, he released his third full-length solo album, Beauty School Dropouts. A CD release party for the album will take place next Saturday, April 27 at Chelsea’s. Doors at 9 p.m. The show starts at 10 p.m. The Rigs and The Dash Between will also perform.

In the late ’90s, Polk was a veritable local rocker, performing sold-out shows with The Kenmores. Then, Polk’s jitters took him to perform with Run Run Run, a Los Angeles shoegaze band, before he headed back to school in Portland.

Wherever he’s been, though, Polk has released roughly an album a year, maybe more, depending on his mood or how many bands he’s playing in.

It’s not unlike his idol, Robert Pollard, the front man for the iconic alternative rock group Guided by Voices that reunited its “classic” lineup in 2012 and released three solid albums.

“Robert Pollard is my hero,” Polk says. “If at anytime of the day, you look at my MP3 player, CD player, I’m probably listening to something that Robert Pollard has done. I’d love to have his set up. He has a studio in his basement, gets up, eats then records. That would be pure heaven.”

You can hear Polk’s love of Guided by Voices on Beauty School Dropouts. Polk’s previous solo albums were full of three-to-four-and-a-half-minute songs. He would initially write songs, plugging bridges or long outros into otherwise standard verse-chorus formulas. On his latest album, Polk did away with those notions, delivering a 16-track album of power pop/rock gems. The longest track is just over three-and-a-half minutes; the rest of the songs barely reach the two-and-a-half minute marker.

“When I started recording, I said I was going to do simple, a lot of songs in not a lot of time,” Polk says. “Every song would be catchy and be what it is. I’m OK with being simple.”

Mostly everything you hear on Beauty School Dropouts is Polk, too — the drums, bass, guitars, and vocals, he recorded and mixed it all, rather spontaneously. The songs were written on the spot in Glitchell’s practice space in Gonzales or his apartment. The sounds are on the lo-fi side with a hint of hiss.

“I really love that ‘lo-fi’ sound, but I wouldn’t put my stuff in that category,” he says. “For some of these songs, I used a simple tape recorder to track drums, no mics. The song ‘Glory’ was all tracked on my iPhone with a four-track app that I downloaded. While I embrace that aesthetic, I also like clarity. I like for people to hear what’s going on.”

The mixing sessions were long — some ran more than 12 hours. Polk never minded the work though. That sound, like the songs, just came to him.

“On any given day, I hear three or four different songs in my head,” he says. “I’m constantly at work, thinking, ‘I wish I could record this.'”

Polk won’t admit it, but he’s also hard to himself. He’ll tell you he doesn’t play enough, though he’s practicing at least three nights a week. He’ll tell you what he didn’t like about his previous albums. However, he’s also cautiously optimistic and already planning another solo album, a split and Glitchell release, matching the ambitious output of Pollard.

Is he afraid that might stop?

“Yeah, sometimes,” he says. “But then you do what you need to do, just start playing guitar and get it out.”