Guided by Voices
Propeller
1992, Rockathon Records
Reissue (via the vinyl version of the Box set): 1995, Scat Records
The final Guided by Voices album. The closing chapter. The grand exit. One last blast before Robert Pollard retires his mic, packs up his guitar, throws his songwriting notebooks in a drawer, never makes Bee Thousand, never makes From a Compound Eye, never makes Space Gun, and kisses his dreams goodbye.
That was true for about five minutes in 1992, at least, when Pollard caved to pressure from his family who didn’t think that a 34-year-old man with a wife and kids should be wasting his time and money making records that nobody except Byron Coley hears.
Six records is a fine run. That’s more albums than The Zombies put out. Or The Move. Or The 13th Floor Elevators. Or Syd Barrett. Or Television. Or The Soft Boys. (Okay, I’ll stop.)
Not a lot of bands know when they’re making their final album. Most bands just sort of fizzle out and that’s that. But Pollard knew going in that this was probably the end and I think that fired him up. I think it inspired him to make a record that summed up everything that he’d learned over the better part of a decade spent grasping at the apple. It inspired him to seize stronger than ever onto his own vision, however weird it might be. It inspired him to make an album mostly composed of pants-wettingly thunderous anthems, real jump-around, hoist-your-beer stuff (an intentional contrast to the dark vibes of Same Place the Fly Got Smashed, maybe). It inspired him to make an album that only he, and this band, would make.
It inspired him to make one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
There are many cuddly moments on the first five Guided by Voices records, but THIS is the one where shit gets real. If the story of Guided by Voices was a Kung fu movie, Propeller would be the scene where the young fighter who stumbled through his training earlier in the film can now beat up fifteen guys all coming at him at the same time and can kill a man with his little finger.
Guided by Voices are now finally ready to get revenge on the gang of brutes who massacred everyone at their Shaolin temple.
Or at least they’re ready to start proving their doubters wrong.
Propeller is more than just great; it’s triumphant. It’s the sound of a band who have found their place in the universe. They’re comfortable in their own skin. They know who they are. They’re not the Beatles or R.E.M. or The Who. They are Guided by Voices, Dayton, Ohio’s psychedelic sons. Here, lo-fi mixes with hi-fi, pop songs that could make a grown man cry sit next to strange things from the dark corners of the basement and it all consistently brings hooks powerful enough to leave deep cracks in the Earth.
Sure, the band at this point were still doing everything themselves, still not playing live and had an audience smaller than the number of people who’ve seen me naked, but a victory is a victory, even if it’s a quiet one. And besides, the band’s state of fame and fortune was about to change.
Opening song “Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox” is still probably THE great Guided by Voices anthem. There are dozens of contenders, but this one is that early star turn that you never forget. If you don’t like it, you’re probably not going to like the band at all. It’s a nearly six-minute suite with no single moment that you could call a chorus. Rather each segment builds to its own catharsis before the song comfortably glides into the next, completely different part. The brilliance of it is that there’s nothing pretentious about it. It doesn’t drag or become a dirge or call any attention to how fucking mental it is. That’s up to you to notice. It plays like a pop song. It’s all good times all of the time.
“Weedking” keeps the epic feeling going, but this time the band proves, for the first-time listener, that they can stick with one melody for a whole song. For two-and-a-half minutes at least. True to its title, it’s the band’s ultimate stoner moment. It burns out quickly, but not before it sends you to another world. Also, “Breathe the air from the fair” is a euphemism for getting high that should be more widespread, I feel.
As for the third track, “Particular Damaged”, it was a mind-blower for me when I read one of the band’s close friends say that this was Robert Pollard’s favorite. It makes sense, though. Pollard often favors the weird shit and this little guitar-and-voice acid blues jam (vocals unintelligible, like a drunk slurring through a cheap walkie talkie) definitely qualifies as the weird shit. As I’ve said before, Guided by Voices are NOT a pop band. If the glittering melodies that you’ve heard so far here have you convinced otherwise, “Particular Damaged” sets you straight. For about two glorious, ragged minutes.
“Quality of Armor” is a great dumbass car anthem that knows it’s a dumbass car anthem (and that’s why it’s great). The title “Metal Mothers” is a reference to vinyl pressing–the metal mother is the metal plate that gives birth to other metal plates that are used to manufacture records–and the song itself is an outsider’s fantasy of rock stardom and maybe the most beautiful melody of the whole set. Then, trashy rocker “Lethary” screams side one to a close.
Side two brings more anthems (“Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy”, “Exit Flagger”), more eccentric melodic gems (“Circus World”, “14 Cheerleader Coldfront”, which is Tobin Sprout’s first vocal, harmonizing with Pollard, on a GBV record), more fine basement trash (“Ergo Space Pig”) and a clip collage of moments from at least eight then-unreleased songs, “Back to Saturn X Radio Report”. True to its title, it’s less of a song than it is a report on what got left off the album. Part of the Guided by Voices mystique are the unreleased songs from Pollard’s archive that goes back to the late 70s and the albums that were planned but never happened (see Dan Jircitano’s terrific Shit Canned blog for exhaustive research on these matters). “Back to Saturn X Radio Report” was the first taste of this. It was the first hint that there are many hidden rooms in this house.
The lovely closer, “On the Tundra” has, in a strange way, always sounded to me like a cartoon theme song. It also sounds like a sweetly non-obvious way to say goodbye. It’s begins as a weary traveler’s lament that ends looking up knowing that the journey was worth it.
Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices put everything they had into this album, but they didn’t bother with cover art this time. Instead the band and their friends got together in the basement, drank cases of beer, and improvised art for each and every sleeve of the original 500-copy, vinyl-only pressing. Drawing on them. Writing on them. Gluing things to them. Every one was unique (and, today, are major collector’s items that often sell for four-figure sums–see GBVDB.com’s gallery of images that people have shared of their own copies).
And then a funny thing happened.
When this album went out into the world (many as promo items), it reached good hands. Adventurous listeners, independent record label people and critics, many of whom were likely drawn to the mysterious handmade art, gave it a shot and were wowed. These folks spread the word and a “Next Big Thing” of the early 90s was deservedly born and the band would go on.
Still, in a sense, Propeller was an ending because after this, GBV’s early, unknown, DIY period was over.