Guided by Voices
“Back to the Lake” b/w “Dig Through My Window”
2002, The Fading Captain Series
The least controversial music news of 2002 was that Guided by Voices were back on Matador Records.
Everyone who cared was happy about it. Everyone knew that it was better this way. The prospect of a more free and spontaneous approach from the band was a welcome thing. The world needed a Guided by Voices who were under no pressure to achieve heavy radio rotation next to Puddle of Mudd.
The hits didn’t happen, but they got through the TVT era without becoming sellout jerks, which counts as a victory to me. Dignity was intact. Inspiration was running at a high. The band seemed to hardly take a breath between labels as they got to work on what I consider one of the very best albums to carry the Guided by Voices name, Universal Truths and Cycles.
But we can’t talk about that yet.
First we have to get into the whopping FOUR 7″ singles of preview tracks, released on The Fading Captain Series, because, hey, maybe the best way to hype an album is to make a big show of confidence like that rather than… whatever the hell TVT did.
The first of these four universal truths to hit us was “Back to Lake”.
The immediate thing I hear in its infectious pounding is that it sounds happy. Silly, even. The storm clouds that hung over Isolation Drills have cleared. From the brief piano intro (a guest spot from Chris Slusarenko) to the relentless bounce of the lead guitar and how Pollard’s vocal melody steadily rides on top, it feels like we’re in a good mood.
Still, this song always makes me feel guilty. It reminds me of college when I didn’t contact my family for, I think, five or six months. It was the Paleolithic era. Cellphones weren’t everywhere. Smartphones were pure science-fiction. There was no social media for me to add my grandmother as a “friend”. Somehow, e-mail never came up.
If you wanted to contact me in my young jerk-off years, you had to call my landline number. My answering machine was probably broken. If I was home, there’s a good chance that I was goofing around on my dial-up internet, which meant you got a busy signal over the phone. You’d have an easier time getting in touch with Buddy Holly.
I didn’t prioritize talking to my family at all. Did they sell pot? Were they going to invite me to a party where lots of girls were going to be? Probably not, so I just forgot about them for awhile.
Eventually my grandmother mailed me a letter to ask me how I was and I felt like a huge jerk.
What I’m trying to say is that I hear “Back to the Lake” as a song from Robert Pollard, the dad, to his kids, who were about college age at this time. He’s saying “Talk to me every now and then, assholes! I don’t know if you’re alive or dead. What the fuck?”
The B-side makes me feel less guilty. The lovely “Dig Through My Window” could only make you feel guilty if you feel bad for loving Paul McCartney and I refuse to fold to bullshit like that. “Dig Through My Window” has that kind of breeze to it, that lost Beatles song feel. It’s got strings. It’s got a chorus that’ll carry you away. It’s got uplifting lines such as “The challenge only lifts you up to set you free”. It got left off the album.
But we’ve got it here. And we’ve got it on an EP that’s coming up.
We’ve got it good enough for me.