Guided by Voices
Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer
1994, Domino
The most fucked-up of the early ’90s 7″ EPs. I bet this one is STILL controversial, but I love it. I’m all about it. I’d get it tattooed on me, but the title is a little too long and I’ve never gotten a tattoo before and I’m a little jittery about the idea and I’d rather stay home and make tacos.
Nevertheless, this record’s rickety madness speaks to my soul.
Now, I don’t know where exactly this fits chronologically into Robert Pollard’s EP freak-out of 1993-94, but my sixth sense (which is wrong six out of seven times) places it toward the end because it sounds like a band who are tired of selling themselves.
They’re tired of proving that a lo-fi band can still rock and deliver songs that should be singles. They’re also, for the moment, tired of building weird fuzzed-out worlds. All they want to do now is rant directly into the tape recorder, everything laid bare and raw. You can hear fingers hit the guitar and bass strings. You can see the sticks hit the drums. You can hear Robert Pollard pop his “p”‘s on a cheap microphone.
On this EP, it’s way past midnight and everyone’s too drunk to give a fuck. And that’s a place where Guided by Voices thrive.
That’s how I like to do shit, too.
My “process” for 90% of my writing on this website: I sit my ass in a chair (usually late at night), fire up the computer, uncork a bottle of wine, pour myself a glass, take a drink, take another drink and then put fingers to keyboard and go. I rant. I freewheel. I let the train fly off the tracks. Sometimes, it works out pretty good. Other times, I write an unruly mess for my more sober self to clean up the next day, which mostly involves chopping out three-paragraph, “what the fuck was I talking about?” digressions and excising or rewriting anything that sounds like a critic wrote it.
So, I am nothing but sympathetic to the way that this record lets it all hang out for seven quick songs on a 7″–a record to be played at 45 rpm, no less (most of the old EPs are 33 rpm jobs). It’s a quick one. The band are just ripping their way through it.
Let’s talk about the songs.
The punk rock party starts with “Matter Eater Lad”, a rock anthem held up on strings like the UFOs in Plan 9 From Outer Space. It’s the first song and the band’s already drunk. Pollard, at least, slurs like a DUI waiting to happen. Meanwhile, the title and lyrics are inspired by an actual DC Comics superhero. (Where’s the Matter Eater Lad movie, Hollywood? While you’re pillaging comic book history, I mean. You’ve already got your theme song right here.)
On the next song, Pollard is still in superhero mode. Or maybe he’s a suicide bomber. All I know is that lines like “Broadcaster House/ I’m gonna blow/ All stand back and give me room” don’t sound like they’re describing a peaceful walk in the park.
“Hunter Complex” brings the memorable line “I’ve got a fever for a plateful of beaver” and a musical ramble shamble that matches its subtlety.
After that, how can you not hear “Pink Gun” as being about anything but a sex toy? Is it? I have no idea. The lyrics mention whores, army jackets, nighttime and someone singing “ratboy this and ratboy that“. You have a whole thirty-six seconds to ponder these matters before the EP’s loveliest song, “Scalping the Guru”, fades in with a rough sketch about the complications of love as it lulls us to the end of side A.
There are only two songs on side B, but they’re both over two minutes long.
“Grandfather Westinghouse” makes me think of the Westinghouse corporation. They’re one of those companies who’ve been around since 400 B.C. and been involved in everything. They’ll sell you a $50 plastic food dehydrator, they’ll buy up a big media company. My theory is that in this song Pollard is singing about an old appliance, even if I don’t know what the lines “Painting the mirror of sin/ Kissing the saccharine sweet next of kin” have to do with that.
By the slow, ambling closer “Johnny Appleseed” everyone is about to collapse. They sound like they’ve been doing this all night. Pollard sings like his head is closer to the floor than it is to his neck. The band play their parts as if they’re trying to not wake up a cat sleeping in the corner of the basement. And it’s a great song, because part of the genius of Guided by Voices is that they make train wrecks like that sound GOOD. In fact, I can’t imagine a more polished take on it being better.
Guided by Voices worked it out so that their mistakes and rough edges never sounded like a band tripping over their shoelaces. No, instead, they had a weird talent for making all of that stuff sound like portals to other worlds.
Vivid worlds. You can see the basement walls. You can see the mazes of empty beer bottles. You can see the moonlight out the window. You can hear the human heartbeat in every single note.
For some us freaks out here, that’s all we need.