Guided by Voices
Sandbox
1987, Halo
Reissue (via the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
A review of Sandbox strikes me as a perfect place to tell you about the absolute, numero uno, most misunderstood thing about Guided by Voices.
I’m real sick of seeing this. I’m ready to rumble over it tonight in the alley behind the closed Burger King. It’s time we start busting heads. Let’s put an end to it here and now.
It’s simple: There are some GBV fans out there, walking among decent people like you and me, who think that they’re a power pop band.
They think that Guided by Voices are The Beatle Boots Band Explosion Revival and that Robert Pollard is a pop melody maker who just keeps forgetting to wear his skinny tie. These are the same people who think that Robert Pollard “needs an editor”. These are the people who might love sweet melodies like “I Am a Scientist” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife” and then not understand why that same guy is involved with Circus Devils or writes stuff like “A Hair in Every Square Inch of the House”. These are the people who say that life would be so much better if Robert Pollard would stop releasing five albums a year and prune everything down to a neat and tidy twelve songs that might sound good piped into Whole Foods while you browse the organic kumquats.
These are the people who just can’t hear the truth, no matter how much noise and weirdness that Guided by Voices pound into their ears.
And that truth is that Guided by Voices are actually a psychedelic band.
They’re the small town Midwestern psychedelia, drunk and disorderly. They’re weird. They’re disorienting. Often fucked-up and far out. Hopelessly eccentric and deeply personal. They keep changing their mind, right in the middle of their albums, about what kind of music that they want to make. Do they want to write the prettiest and catchiest songs that you’ve ever heard or do they want to follow strange shadows in the basement all night? Guided by Voices don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t do both. They may not be eating acid, but they’re high on rock history and full of alcohol (their drug of choice). All inhibitions are down and anything goes, even blatant mistakes, as long as it sounds cool.
Yes, Robert Pollard is also a top-shelf pop songwriter who seems able to conjure up a fresh, should-be-a-hit anytime he wants, but that’s only part of the wider vision. It’s a vision that also embraces mystery, noise, immediacy and unpredictability. Guided by Voices will put a first-take, lo-fi demo on the album if it works, even if it’s a sore thumb among more polished tracks. (Their best albums are strange patchwork affairs.)
From Pere Ubu to The Electric Eels to Devo, Ohio has spawned more than their share of singular rock bands (“Ohio rock” definitely has its little worldwide cult). If you ask me, Robert Pollard and his, as of this writing, 103 albums and dozens of EPs and thousands of released songs, is an easy fit among any other Midwest weirdo you could mention.
So, no, Guided by Voices are NOT a simple power pop band. If you think they are, you’ve missed the point by a sweet hundred miles.
Unless you’re talking about Sandbox.
Okay, on this album they’re a power pop band. Pretty much, kinda. Almost. If you squint.
At the very least, they sound like young guys with ambition, right down to the album cover (the only GBV album to greet you with a photo of the band on front; in fact, there are a total of FIVE photos of the band on the sleeve) where, front and back, they’re striking multiple poses and drummer Kevin Fennell has decided that he’s too cool to wear shoes.
For Guided by Voices in their early, DIY days, each record is a fresh start. They’re trying on new identities. They’re figuring out their voice. At the very least, they’re not willing to waste their own money on recording, pressing and packaging an album on which they merely repeat themselves.
And, as I said in a previous entry, nobody in 1987 was listening, so they could do things like that. No one on our good green Earth cared either way.
They began with an EP of R.E.M. imitations and then made an LP of basement weirdo music. Their next move: ride the mid-’80s Southern alternative pop wave a la Guadalcanal Diary and The dB’s. Sandbox sounds exactly like that stuff. The songs are short and rocking and the band aren’t here to screw around. Robert Pollard isn’t a good singer at the point in time. His voice is young and hasn’t acquired its warm rasp, yet, but he gives it his all. Also, the melodies are there and the band execute them with summery grace from co-producer Steve Wilbur’s 8-track home studio.
It’s not a great record, but it’s an entertaining fling that didn’t deserve the bashing that it got in the mid-’90s when these albums saw reissue in a Scat Records box set.
Song highlights:
“Barricade”, in which GBV’s much-noted Who influence first punches its way into the light. It’s a compact rock opera, so melodic that it hits like a breeze. It throws in an early Beatles reference (“Little child, little child, won’t you dance with me…”) to make absolutely certain that you know that their hearts are in the right place. It’s an inkling that the band were onto something.
“Trap Soul Door”, the album’s lone ballad. The stripped-down arrangement and slow tempo reveals the air around the microphones. The band sounds so humble here. Plus, the song is lovely. It was the only track here that that ever got played live after the band became international indie-rock superstars around 1994 or so. It’s also the album’s shortest song at a cool one minute, fifteen seconds.
“Everyday”, which is just a damn good song, a melodic jewel that could only have come from the ’80s. Do young people in 2018 still discover bands like Let’s Active and Thin White Rope? I don’t fucking know, but if they want more of that sound, they need a mix tape with “Everyday” on it even more than I need to end this overlong review.
Do people even still give each other mix tapes? Or mixes at all? I have no idea.
And that’s the kind of listener who might best appreciate Sandbox, a true ’80s relic.