Guided By Voices - Disc of the day

Guided By Voices
Alien Lanes

(Matador, 1995)

Ohio indie legends’ ninth album. If they’d have stopped here it would still have been an enviable career.

It’s finally happened. This month a new Robert Pollard album arrived before I’d had a chance to listen to the last one. For GBV fans, keeping up with Pollard’s output has always been something of an endurance test. Even the dedicated struggled to contend with at least 21 GBV albums between 1986 and 2004, plus countless solo albums, side projects, pseudonyms and collaborations. And since the band broke up Pollard’s pace has hardly faltered. But when it all gets too much there are a handful of albums in their vast catalogue that light the way back, like US indie’s great Bat Lamp. 1994’s Bee Thousand is one, the album that got them wider distribution through Matador and made GBV a cult concern beyond the nightflies of their Dayton, Ohio home. Its follow up, Alien Lanes, is pure abreaction for me – a chance to revisit and revel in beer-swilling, high energy, lo-fi rave-ups. It slurs, hisses and rollicks through 28 tracks, none over three minutes. Live staples Game Of Pricks (a Beatlesy, Replacements-style picking at the scabs of a wounded relationship), Motor Away (a radio anthem in any other life) and the muffled genius of My Valuable Hunting Knife punctuate a tumbling mass of ideas, all linked by fragments of songs whose throwaway brilliance is like a charity shop Who Sell Out and has more hooks than most bands will come up with in an entire career. By 2004 both GBV and many of their fans were too old to maintain their dignity through it all, but it’s good to go back now and again. I predict a ten-page feature in few years’ time (are you listening boss?)

Jenny Bulley

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 12/04/2008

Further Listening

Guided By Voices – Bee Thousand (Matador)

Hüsker Dü – New Day Rising (SST)

The Replacements – Let It Be (Deluxe) (Rhino)

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I agree, Alien Lanes is the apotheosis of the GBV aesthetic - or at least the most famous iteration of it - short, lo-fi avant-pop. Stopping there would have put a tidy bow on their output but at the same time would have been wholly out of character for a band that was anything but tidy.

Posted by Col. Clink at 5:59 PM GMT 12/04/2008 Report Abuse

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A corker of an album. Bring on the ten page feature, Mojo mag!

Posted by gottenbold at 12:38 PM GMT 17/04/2008 Report Abuse

Reply to this post
A corker of an album. Bring on the ten page feature, Mojo mag!

Posted by gottenbold at 12:39 PM GMT 17/04/2008 Report Abuse

Reply to this post
A corker of an album. Bring on the ten page feature, Mojo mag!

Posted by gottenbold at 12:39 PM GMT 17/04/2008 Report Abuse

Reply to this post
A corker of an album. Bring on the ten page feature, Mojo mag!

Posted by gottenbold at 12:39 PM GMT 17/04/2008 Report Abuse

Reply to this post