Disco de Guided by Voices: “Alien Lanes”

GbV's "Alien Lanes", though not even their best album, is clearly their most approachable and most even-handed work. The lo-fi quality found on tracks like "Chicken Blows"... the stadium-rock bombast of "Alright" and the little songs under 30 seconds like "Hit" and "Gold Hick"... all combine in such a supreme balance of cool: economical yet powerful.

If you're any kind of rock afficionado, you'll see right away where Robert Pollard gets his musical mojo from: early rock, Beatles, art-rock guys (I hear old Genesis all over this album), garagey "Nuggets"-punk, but his lyrics deserve a lot of attention on this album. "Watch Me Jumpstart", for example, is such a positive self-affirming lyric of change ('watch me jumpstart as the old skin is peeled / see an opening and bust into the field / hidden longings no longer concealed').

Pollard's legendary thousands and thousands of written, but as of yet unrecorded, songs seem to have sprung from whatever it is that he's thinking of, or looking at or walking past... whatever street he lives on at the moment... So, often you get some odd lyrics that go nowhere and have no meaning, but he very often redeems himself ably with little lyrical gems ("I speak in monotone / leave my f**kin' life alone") full of great imagery ("Post-punk X-Men parked his forklift like a billion stars flickering from the grinder's wheel"). Definite Captain Beefheart influence on the words.

Bee Thousand is probably better, but only my a smidgen. Both are worthy of five-stars... both are very important works of 1990's rock. Buy it.

Jesus, what a glorious mess this disk is. Side by side with some of the most ridiculous crap I've ever heard in my life are some of the most interesting and creative melodies I've heard in some time. Either these guys are completely incapable of editing themselves, or they simply don't care to. "Alien Lanes" makes it very obvious that the members of GBV, particularly head honcho Robert Pollard, does not discriminate among his various creations. That means that discerning listeners must do the job for themselves, but in my opinion, it's ultimately worth the trouble. For every ridiculous waste of my time like "Big Chief Chinese Restaurant" or "Ex- Supermodel", which features somebody making loud snoring noises throughout the track, there are that many more snippets of inspiring genius. "Game of Pricks," "My Valuable Hunting Knife" and "Motor Away" each deserve to be featured on your local `hit' radio station, or better yet, cleaned up and covered by a famous band that could only wish to write something so clever and catchy. Since Pink Floyd are incapable of generating fresh new material, why not cover "Always Crush Me"?

"Alien Lanes" actually shows the band trying a bit harder than usual to retain some semblance of sonic clarity, even stretching out to sparingly include some slide guitar and violin. Look, the CD has twenty-eight tracks on it. 28!!! Yes, a good percentage of them can be dismissed, but even if half of them are extraneous, that still leaves fourteen that are thoroughly worthwhile. I wish that they would spend a bit more effort focusing on what makes their best stuff so good and eliminate the chaff, but then again, maybe sorting through their output is half of the fun. A Tom Ryan

Roni Sarig? Hello?

1. "Guided by Voices have descended from stardom to self-parody": at what point, please remind me, were they stars, and free of parody, self- and otherwise?

2. "Or in other words, the band is like a mass-marketed "homemade" cookie: A well-intentioned contradiction that has nevertheless outgrown its usefulness": O be still my beating pompousness. Usefulness? One thing about Bob Dylan, he sure was useful. When you mix up these metaphors, which blender speed do you prefer?

3. "Except for a disturbing homosexual slur half way through," which means that Dayton, Ohio, that bastion of decadence, must be the new Gomorrah, launching as they have the band The Giggling F-gg-ts (I hope that flies, Amazon auto-censors), with whom GBV claims merely to have ridden into town.

Four stars. This is a band incapable of making a five star album, and probably they'd loathe it if they did. Such as it is, for what it's worth, and what there is of it (as Pogo used to say), this record is a great, happy, apple-cheeked time, punning on art-rock, garage slop, and Led Zeppelin. If you can't dig "Closer You Are," "Motor Away," or the great ant-sized arena rockers "Little Whirl"/"My Son Cool," well, you and the stick you've chosen just don't like rock and roll very much, do you?

Nothing personal.

Alien Lanes was released back in the mid 1990's when the band's lineup included musicians like Tobin Sprout, Jim Pollard, Jim Greer, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennel as well as the band's leader, Bob Pollard. The Guided by Voices lineup would quickly change as the years went by, and many fans of the group long for the days when this specific lineup and album's like Alien Lanes were the norm for the band.

What I like about Alien Lanes is the musical production and the sound, which is like a throwback to the 1960's. Whether the tune is "Closer you Are", "My Valuable Hunting Knife", "Motor Away", or one of the others, the sound on most every track reminds me of a 1960's British band. Pollard's vocals even have a tinge of British flavor to them, even though he was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio.

These songs have a low- level of production and this might sound like a strike against the album at first. But once you listen to these songs, you will likely agree that it wouldn't be the same any other way. The low-fi production helps to give the songs an "older" sound and without it, the unique resemblance to 1960's rock would be erased. I like new, polished music as much as anyone, but I don't think it would sound right with this set of tunes. I think Pollard and the others made the right decision with the production.

Overall, Alien Lanes is one of the band's strongest efforts. The songs are raw, strong, and memorable with their catchy rhythms and power chord sequences. The throwback sound to the 1960's might surprise listeners at first. But the more you play this CD, the more you will appreciate the sound. It's one of GBV's best!

28 incredible songs, most of which come and go in about one minute, thirty seconds. This album came on the heels/face of their legendary release "Bee Thousand" and was their first recording for Matador records. Bandwise, this is the ultimate GBV line-up. The rocking is fully searched-out here and all the classic elements are in place: cryptic, poetic lyrics, perfectly sloppy arrangements, Pollard songs, Tobin songs... all with a lo-fi sheen that makes their anthemic numbers bigger than the cosmos, while lending the quiet, obtuse songs more ethereal room. It is what it is: Brilliant.