Guided by Voices
Alien Lanes
1995, Matador Records
A part of Robert Pollard’s aesthetic that’s not often talked about is that he’s inspired by the world of record store bins. Endless miles of vinyl to flip through. Records that you’ve seen a million times. Records that you’ve never seen before in your life. Bad records, good records, weird records, records that you will never hear. Records that you wasted money on. Records that you would love if you heard them, but so far you haven’t bothered.
I think that Pollard, a devoted collector who still hits record stores all over the country when he’s on tour, imagines his own work in those bins and he considers it his job to put together something that catches the digger’s eye. He goes for mystery. He wants you to be curious about what the hell kinda record this is, whether you chance upon it in 1995 or 2045.
Thus the abstract collage art (Pollard’s own work) that doesn’t tell you much about the music. Thus the bizarre song titles. Thus the extra-long tracklists.
If you’re interested in the weird corners of rock music (which is the kind of listener that Guided by Voices are going for), how do you dismiss unheard an album with songs called “Evil Speakers”, “They’re Not Witches”, “Game of Pricks” and “My Valuable Hunting Knife”? You can’t. You’ve got to check that shit out.
Pollard went aggressive with that tactic for the biggest Guided by Voices release yet, their first album for the prestigious Matador Records (a young label at the time that had achieved mucho credibility after recent successes with Pavement and Liz Phair).
It’s got twenty-eight goddamn songs on it (total running time: just over forty minutes). The cover art looks somewhat psychedelic, but you never know. This could be anything. Somehow the brown border on all four sides gives it extra character.
Then there are the guys on the back cover–a rare band photo on a GBV record–and how they all look like they want to get this over with. They want to stop posing for pictures and maybe get to work on cleaning up that cluttered basement area.
You don’t know who is who in this picture. When I first bought this album (spring of ’96) I honestly didn’t know which guy was the singer. My best guess at the time for who Robert Pollard was in this picture was actually Tobin Sprout. I had no idea.
The credits inside are vague to the max. The band are identified as “Sad Freaks” and it’s just a list of names with no indication of who plays what. Also there are EIGHT guys listed as being in the band, but only five guys pictured on the back. What the hell? The credited producer being “Mr. Japan” and the credited engineer being “The Red-Nosed Driver” didn’t help. I was so, so confused and I didn’t have the internet to help me out.
But I didn’t mind. I accepted that confusion. I liked it. Rock ‘n’ roll is about mystery. This album taught me that.
As for the music, you won’t be surprised to learn that I think that this is one of greatest rock albums of all-time. Along with Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, A True Star and The Loud Family’s Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, this is one of the great “overstuffed suitcase” albums. It’s a got a fuckload of songs, BUT it’s not a double album. They intentionally crammed it all onto a single LP.
That means lots of short songs, rapidly changing moods and tempos, a constantly shifting landscape. Weirdness rules.
I can sing this whole album to you, including the closing instrumental. It doesn’t even need to be playing. I know it all by heart. It’s one of those things that’s in my blood. Like The Beatles. Like Twin Peaks. Like Maker’s Mark right now.
At this point, Guided by Voices were still lo-fi, but a more palatable lo-fi than ever. I don’t know if it’s the mastering by Bob Ludwig (one of those big-time guys who’s mastered or remastered everybody from Led Zeppelin to Johnny Fuckface) or the band’s intention from the start, but this is a vivid, punchy sort of lo-fi. It’s got tape hiss, but it’s also got a real bass sound (bass is the first thing you hear in the first song). The guitars sound like AM radio, but the vocals have the presence of a full moon in a quiet summer night sky. Bottom line: the songs come through loud and clear. If the lo-fi sound here bothers you, I’m sorry to be the one to inform you of this, but you’re stupid.
Guided by Voices are a band that people argue about a lot, even back then. And one of the arguments that comes up even to this day is 90s lo-fi GBV vs. later hi-fi GBV. In these arguments someone is all but guaranteed to say that lo-fi GBV really wanted to be hi-fi, but this lo-fi sound was all they could manage at the time. In other words, lo-fi was not an aesthetic choice; it was a necessity.
There’s some truth in that, I’m sure.
BUT when Guided by Voices were lo-fi, they were INTO IT. They embraced it. I think they were inspired by the limitations. They got creative with it. They took their cheap little space and made it beautiful. They liked the imperfections. They even seem to take pleasure sometimes in vandalizing their own songs (the snoring throughout “Ex-Supermodel” here). They were doing anything but slumming. Maybe lo-fi wasn’t something that the band saw as a cause or a statement of some kind, but I do think that it sounded good to them.
I mean, they COULD have remade this album.
When Warner Bros. was wining and dining them in 1994, waving a contract in the band’s faces, they wanted them to re-record Alien Lanes all punched up and ready to share the airwaves with Alice in Chains (something that I can’t even imagine.)
But the band didn’t do it.
When they eventually signed with Matador, they got a six-figure advance, which they could have used to make a “better” record.
But they didn’t do that, either.
Nope, Alien Lanes was already perfect and I agree with that sentiment with every cell in my little flimsy body. They made it, they worked on it and they were confident in it. They trusted themselves, not the music business.
If on Bee Thousand, the band are happy to be here (“We’re finally here/And shit, yeah, it’s cool”), on this album they’re already getting jaded.
The 22-second screed “Hit” is the obvious rant about this (“We participate in the shit/ Now that’s a hit!”), but several other tracks are under a similar black cloud of music business expectations. “As We Go Up, We Go Down” anticipates the pitfalls. “Ex-Supermodel” tells of the future that Pollard doesn’t want (“I write music for soundtracks now…”). The thunderous “Motor Away” is about the triumph of being acknowledged, but “Game of Pricks”, which is also a love song, understands that the whole game is shady. Meanwhile, Tobin Sprout’s great “A Good Flying Bird”, about people who just want to be left alone, acquires extra poignancy in this context.
It’s not that the band are lazy; they just don’t want to be told what to do. They have this crazy idea that if they make an album that satisfies themselves, then other people might like it, too. If they don’t like it today, it at least is guaranteed a bright future as an oddball record bin curiosity.
This whole album is a joyous affront. This band is standing their ground and everything about this record comes together as a triumph.
And yes, it was an indie hit, so it all worked out here.
Be careful when buying this on vinyl. Matador put out a really shitty repressing in the early 00s that skipped about two hundred times straight out of the shrinkwrap. The original pressing from ’95 is good though, as is the current pressing as I write this in the Year of Our Lord 2019. So, be wary when buying this used. Go new if it’s available. I nabbed the swanky blue vinyl put out last year by Newbury Comics and it plays like butter.