Guided by Voices
“Universal Truths and Cycles” b/w “Beg for a Wheelbarrow”
2002, The Fading Captain Series
This is the fourth and final* 7″ teaser single released before the Universal Truths and Cycles album would hit the racks of your local Camelot Music in the summer of 2002 and it’s got the best B-side of the batch.
(*There were some European CD singles with repeated A-sides and that offered even more non-album tracks, but those can wait for a compilation EP that’s coming up soon.)
The flip here is called “Beg for a Wheelbarrow” and it’s a sinister beast meant for a band who can summon real thunder. It builds tension in an insistent post-punk march and then releases it in a haunting acapella section. Pollard’s words are about being broke, in debt and under the boot heel.
The personal, internal rage of Isolation Drills switches outward here into an anthem for the debt cycle. It’s where big dreams are charged to credit cards. It’s where as soon as you start college, multiple predators have their teeth sunk into you (or are trying to do so). It’s when you don’t even understand the value of money yet, but you’re already on the hook for a bunch of it. It’s how some people live their entire lives.
The song is not a simple rant against banks and lenders, though; nor is it a lecture about personal responsibility.
I hear it as asking “What are we running away from?”. How did we get sold a vision of a better life just beyond our means–but chargeable to our VISA card–and why are we buying it (literally and figuratively)? How did we get insane like that?
Or, as the song pointedly says at its climax, “For the rest of your days/ You must dig a deeper hole/ And then you’ll feel better!”
That’s what I think “Beg for a Wheelbarrow” is about, at least.
I’m probably wrong. It’s probably about football.
The A-side is upstaged here, but it’s a good one, too. The album title track is a leaf off the tree of 60s guitar pop goodness carried by a cool breeze. It’s all melody as played a band who don’t waste a note and executed with classic Pollard brevity, as well as classic Pollard mystery when it comes to the lyrics. There’s a whiff of economic commentary here if you want it. It’s a song for “The nation of duress/ And God, yes, it’s a mess.” A few lines later Pollard addresses “The romantic soul for us/ In the lost hierarchy of land and landowners/ And down will go back up/ Forevermore!”
After this, am I ready to take to the streets and fuck shit up and lay waste to capitalism? Eh, not really. People get hurt doing that stuff.
After four singles, am I ready to get to the album finally? Yes! It’s coming up next.