GBV fans are fickle tripe sometimes. During the real "Classic" era, fans wanted a cleaner, bigger, more professional production to compliment the pop rock genius bowel movements. When GBV decided to polish their turds with big-time studio theatrics fans got pissed and stopped caring. And since Do The Collapse, fans wanted a quick return to the lo-fi, shit-sounds of the "classic" era. If you want classic GBV, THIS is for you. If you want the next B1000, then go spin your scratched up copy of Universal Truths on a Fisher-Price record player and STFU.

Uncle_Bob

What if I don't want either of the options provided?

I know exactly what you mean, Lemmy! You can only change the lyrics to Ace of Spades so many times and call it a 'new song' before it starts to get old.

Uncle_Bob

AWFUL

there ya go, a "review" that makes sense
people who think this "classic" lineup garbage sounds like "classic" gbv have no ears on

(and even if you listen without prejudice®™ it's simply terrible stuff)

addressing what you said, i don't believe anyone's ever wanted gbv to do anything but be gbv. normal-ass musick fans like th bits they like & take or leave th shit (and boy is there a lotta shit!), but i'm fairly positive they still respect bob no matter what he's doing as long as it's evident that he's following whatever muse he needs to at any given time; those postal blowfish jerkoffs (th people yr probably referring to when you refer to "GBV fans") don't even care what it sounds like cuz they couldn't tell good musick from a frog in a blender - they just need someone to revere and some giant collection of songs/stories/snippets/shitbricks to collect, log, and argue about on th internet when they aren't playing WoW or working in a cubicle. i don't remember ANYONE saying to me "i wish bee thousand was recorded in a big studio" and i don't remember anyone wishing for another alien lanes when gbv was making isolation drills. it's fruitless to do these things.

unless yr a critic. then you (might just) get paid to be an idiot. but i hope you aren't talking about critics.

Nah, what I mean is the "classic" lineup than the 'classic sound.' Of course, LGETF and CCSAU don't sound anything like B1000 or Alien Lanes. But, let's say if the classic lineup never broke up after UTBUTS, these last two albums seem like the logical progression following UTBUTS if it were 1996/1997 in terms of sound and quality. Which in a way, depending on your like or dislike of the last two albums, kind of proves Bob right in that he could only go so far musically with the band he had back then, hence the lineup changes.

Uncle_Bob

th last two records don't suffer musicianship-wise; th songs are terrible and th recording (esp on factory, but certainly still on ufo) is just unforgivably bad (and why? they were great with a four track all th way thru 'tonics & twisted chasers' - so one would be led to believe that they could just jump right back in with that old style/skill, which hasn't proven to be the case.)

guided by voices has never been a band that needed a certain level of musicianship to achieve most of its ends; only when bob decided to take his songwriting in a certain direction did he feel he needed, say, th cobra verde dudes to help him prog-out some of those arrangements. BUT, two things: 1) anyone can give his great songs of any era a good go no matter how limited their musicianship (and who cares how his shit songs are played??), and 2) kevin, mitch, toby, demos - these ARE exceptional musicians. it might be argued (by those who want to think of them as hometown simpletons or at best idiots savant) that they are in some generic way th (charmingly) crummiest players, relatively speaking, of all gbv members, but even if you feel like accepting this "what if…" hypothesis they are most certainly not foremost in what's bringing these last two records down.

given, much of th playing on '…ufo' is crummy, but it seems set up to be that way - guitars that could've been tuned but weren't, etc - and th much-more-odd thing is that some of th better songs (like th title track) suffer from ridiculously embarrassing arrangements and - get this! - go on too long! i never thought bob would commit that crime - he always seemed to know right when to let a (great, alarmingly brief) song go so you were always left wanting more.

bob simply has no songs left (or no sense of how to get at them if they're still in him somewhere - it's ultra-sad, but with sycophants like th luna/fading captain assholes around for so long now, it makes all th sense in th world that his sense of what makes a good song is long-gone…but then this has been true for like a decade now).

While I agree with you that most of the songs are god-awful, I just don't see or understand how the recording is just as bad. I mean, given the history and context of GBV, this is to be expected almost; in fact, pretty much all of GBV's catalog, production-wise, pre-Do The Collapse is horrible! So I guess I don't get what you mean the recording/production is bad when technically B1000 is just as bad if not worse, IMHO. I've loaned B1000 to jocko-homos in the past only to have it returned within hours the same day because jocko-homo couldn't get over the shitty production quality. So what really is the difference in technique between recording on a 4 track in 1994 and 2012? To my ears at least, these last two albums sound somewhat better than B1000, et al.



I don't know... Tobin, Mitch, & Greg have all contributed and are just as guilty, I think. All the tracks Bob collaborated with on these past two albums are pretty much throw-a-ways (i.e.: Go Rolling Home, Cyclone Utilities, The Head, Fly Baby, Tyson's High School, etc.). Even Toby has a few clunkers. I think whoever Bob surrounds himself at any given time during the recording process definitely has an influence on his songwriting, on record. 'I Am A Tree,' Speak Kindly.., and Lifeguards are phenomenal, and Doug Gillard is a more accomplished guitar player than Mitch & Toby combined, IMHO. But if I had to choose the live GBV lineup to see? No doubt, it would be the current "classic" lineup, always. Like you said, anyone can play GBV of any era no matter who the player is. GBV is a live experience anyway and the records are just an afterthought it seems.



Well, now you admit the playing is crummy which is really attributed to the musicians involved. I love Mitch Mitchell, but let's be real here - not the greatest guitar player!



With another album due in 5 months, Bob could be saving the best for last, but having no real expectations for this band anymore, I doubt it.

Uncle_Bob

see, that's where we part ways th most. just to run facts, except for some bits on 'devil' & 'same place' & mike rep's re-eq'ing of 'propeller', th early stuff was all done in studios. sounds clear if not stellar, with moments of utter perfection ("drinker's peace"? "hank's little fingers"? "like i do"? "barricade"? "trust the wizard"? "some drilling implied"?). and th refraze/adny shernoff(/cromagnon? i don't remember) stuff from around 'bee' & 'alien' (not to mention th peel session!) is maybe their best 'big studio' stuff ever. but i digress. getting towards personal preference, 'bee thousand' and 'alien lanes' (as well as th sadly unreleased first version of 'under th bushes') are fantastic records, recording-wise. cheap and bad are not th same, and they aren't just "good for what they are" either - they're just plain good. i love th sound of those records; they're th sound of a band doing th absolute best they could with th situation they were handed/chose to accept (i.e. we've paid to record in studios for so long and no one has cared about th records we've released so if we're gonna keep doing this for th love of it - and because of th fact that we just can't stop - let's at least not waste any more money) and they're like a direct distillation of both th songs' & th band's essence; it may be an illusion but th level of heart, ability, joy, & talent that's represented so purely on those tapes might be without equal outside certain jazz records - they're material examples of What They Were On About and What They Were On About at th time was real fucking good. they weren't trying to be a "four track band", they were just using a four track, and they certainly weren't pushing each other to sound shitty to match th recording quality (cuz in any case it maybe wouldn't have occurred to anyone that th recording was shitty, and even if it had, how better to rectify that than to play really well). th last two, on th other hand, are th result of a band trying to sound shitty, which is not only th exact opposite, but also fucking offensive, and (somewhat ironically) actually bad.

fig. 4: retorts sans quotes section (2):

why mention "i am a tree"? gem wrote it.

there's a difference between bad players and playing badly.

moving on…
if i had too choose a lineup to see (rehash-stylee), it would be th short-lived 'collapse'-era bob/doug/demos/mcpherson. they were on fire. but quite honestly i don't think i would even want to see that, because th real problem is bob's evolution from great-songwriter-with-a-high-opinion-of-himself-who-wants-to-present-to-a-crowd-what-he-himself-would-be-stoked-to-see to just guy-with-a-high-opinion-of-himself-who-knows-people-want-to-see-him-on-a-stage.

it's amazing that there's been such a shift from gbv being a band that didn't even play live (from fairly early on until between 'vampire' and 'bee thousand') to being a a band for whom th records are, quote, only an afterthought. if th way you feel about it is echoed (for th most part) among their current crop of fans, i might be seeing why i feel so diametrically opposed.

in any case i was just saying that th guys he has with him aren't th main reason for th albums' shit-ness - even tho toby hasn't written a good track in awhile and th actual playing on th album is far from tops - since anyone could be playing shittily on th album. (i suppose it sounds of cop-out but i was just trying to make sure you know i think they aren't th main reason i feel th albums blow. great playing and stellar production would leave these albums just as shit.) UNLESS you factor in th fact that playing with those dudes again has given him/them all th excuse to be crappy (because the fans have spoken and they've said they like em crappy) or that he in fact specifically got those guys back together in order to cater to a perceived yearning from th fans for crappiness. which is so fucking stupid i can't even handle it. if th fans can't articulate what it is about 'bee thousand' and 'alien lanes' that they love outside their shared 'crappiness' they should go ahead with yr aforementioned stfu, and if th existence of this whole 'reunion' means what i think it does - that bob is listening to his public and reading his own fucking press - then yr certainly right to maintain no real expectations cuz nothing good can come of that.

Thats a great point, Bob (Pollard)!

I was just simplistically breaking down the the two era's in general (lofi & major label, whatever) to make a point. But I totally agree with you in terms of sound and beauty all those albums/songs inherently possess despite the actual production qualites.



Agreed. The early to mid-90's were a creative zenith for pretty much any and every indie rock band at the time (Archers of Loaf, Pavement, Yo La, Flaming Lips, Superchunk, Brainiac, Dinosaur), take your pick. Drugs were so much better back then as well. Fuck this bath salt bullshit.



Ooof, harsh! I don't find them offensive just sub-par.



?? You lost me.. I just figured it was a 'Doug song.'



Not if you're Mitch Mitchell. SIKE!



Hmm, it was my understanding they started out as a bar band first then slowly migrated to a studio-only orientation because no one cared initially. But I could be wrong.

Anyways, I've always viewed the studio albums of any band as mere advertisements/promotional tools to the live performance. Because those albums don't necessarily capture or represent the sound and essence of a band on stage most of the time. I can't remember how many times I've been blown away by a live band only to be disappointed by their LP/CD (i.e: Brainiac). And that just might be the difference in our POV's in this regard.



Honestly, this is just a quick money grab on nostalgia and these last two releases are nothing more than accessories to the live component, IMO. 21st century studio GBV will never re-capture that "magic" it once had, but bet your ass I'll be wasted at the next live show.

Uncle_Bob

gbv did indeed play live for awhile in th mid-'80s, but if you listen to bob he'll tell you they were around as early as '81 so i think there was a period of initial not-being-a-live-band and then even once they were playing battle of the bands and shit i think they were pretty done with playing live by '88 (?) - again i'm not doing any research outside my addled memory so don't quote me on this. then after that they didn't play until some wedding and a show with truman's water at bernie's, and it had to be 1993 by that point, if not later.

i have to say i'm just FUCKING FLABBERGASTED at yr view towards albums, but hey, to each their own, eh. it's like saying you'd rather go talk to someone at a bar than read a book. not really possible to compare. i do challenge you to hear unicorn's 'kedamono no arashi', this heat's 'deceit', the boo radleys' 'giant steps' or any of another 9,000,000 amazingly crafted/craftily amazing/beautifully accidental/accidentally beautiful/etc etc albums as ads for live shows. in my not so humble opinion, the record album (th about 35 minutes, two sides of vinyl version)(and this after i just mentioned a double and one that only came out on cd) is th single finest artistic possibility/format on this green earf, and as much as i llluuuuurrrrvvv live musick - and of course there's live musick that will NEVER be representable with recordings (arguably all of it) - a fucking great album is just pure fucking bliss (whether it's an attempt at representing [no matter how much steve albini wants to argue with th yr-not-in-yr-basement-so-now-it's-ALL-dishonest nature of th endeavor, usually] a live show - like a waltham or too much joy record - or something else entirely - like th ones i mentioned above and, one could argue, 'bee thousand' etc).

i think th first superchunk record is an example of how a great live band can make a great album that perfectly represents their live deal. 'you're living all over me' by dinosaur, too.

and i CAN'T BELIEVE 'bonsai superstar' doesn't kick yr fucking ass. brainiac were awesome live but their records aren't exactly bullshit.

I love Let's Go Eat The Factory but it took more than a few repeated listens until it blossomed. It sounds like a completely different record now than the first couple of times that I listened to it and I don't think I would have ever vibed with it if I didn't keep going back.

Thankfully, repeating the experience is a lot easier to do with rock and roll than with literature due to its sheer brevity. I think that's also why it's more forgivable to be uneven as a result of taking chances with music. Listeners aren't reading Moby Dick for the 4th time. It's 35-40 minutes. Melville better have gotten this right because I just read this book for the past few days. Two minutes of rock and roll that doesn't take you to nirvana? Go listen to your own awesome shitty band. Go to the next track. Throw it out the window and move on. HAHA. It's all pretty innocent-like Vonnegut comparing being pissed about art to being mad at an ice cream cone. You don't like it? Don't eat it. Go make your own and give us all a break and stop taking any credit or blame for it.

I agree with Ian Thomas about why GBV is likable:

"GBV’s charm has always been their ability to follow their muses, however strange, with a breezy casualness. Though GBV speak in puzzles both musically and lyrically, they remain inviting because they approach it with a lack of seriousness, a throwaway attitude."

I also like Brent Able's review of Class Clown. This is part of it:

"Guided by Voices are victims of their own greatness. Hiatus notwithstanding, they’ve been so good for so long that we’ve come to take them for granted, greeting each new release with some lazy variation of the same lazy response. Critics will mention Pollard’s prolificacy first and foremost, and the general unevenness and all-over-the-placeness of his band’s albums is inevitably deduced as a consequence; clearly the guy just shits out thirty songs a day, and decides their placement on albums through some aleatory ritual involving Budweiser and a dart board. Which: maybe.

But why not give Pollard more credit than that? It would be one thing if his prolificacy was marked by monotony, and every new Guided by Voices album and song sounded like the last. Any discerning listener can see that’s not the case: Pollard and co. are endlessly experimenting, and the wonderful inconsistency of their enormous corpus can be seen less as a case of poor self-editing and more as the byproduct of an endless attempt to exploit the unending possibilities of rock music. So what if they miss the target almost as much as they hit it? The song will be over in two minutes anyway. Is your time really so fucking important?...

Overall, his contributions might not be as impressive here as on Factory, but Pollard is really no better or worse than he’s ever been.

Which, really, is an accurate way to describe the second coming of Guided by Voices. They’re like your friendly neighborhood drunk: you always know they’ll be sloshed, but you can never quite be sure what they’re going to say or do the next time you see them. Class Clown gives us what is most best and most constant about the band—their sonic restlessness, shambolic hooks, broken glory—and nothing less. The next sixteen albums, we can only assume, will do the same."

[/quote]

It we are still nominating post post of the year, I'm going with Cruise Elroy's above rant.

Are you kidding, really? My view doesn’t preclude the ability to enjoy a good-sounding studio record at all! The record is, in a sense, more or less, an advertisement for your band, correct? Anyone can sit at home and make a record, that doesn’t make you a musician or an artist. It’s what you can do with those sounds on stage that matters. The record is not the blueprint for what I do on stage, it’s what I do on stage/in the garage/basement/wherever, that ends up being the blueprint for what I do on record. Does that make sense, slightly? Eh...

On the flip-side, the Grifters make fantastic sounding records, but are just horrible live, IMHO.



Or rather, more like talking to the author of said book at the bar getting wasted.



Bonsai kicks my ass when I EQ the bass all the way up! Hissing improves on this. This is probably my favorite band out of Dayton, shit, Trader Vic's was my hangout s/pot before Timmy started working there! Love this band.

Uncle_Bob

sure it does.



could you not leave th name of th band off th physical record or tape or whatever and still enjoy th musick?



i seen th grifters twice and tho they were ridiculous drunk it was a blast both times. TOTALLY unrecognizable versions of some of my favorite-ever songs…that's difficult to do. as my dad would say, they held my interest.

i think tho making (organized, recorded) musick is a distinctly human endeavor and all th things about it are, necessarily, human (composition, flow, ability, &c), humans are th furthest thing from my mind when i listen to musick. th musick rises above, exists outside…i just don't care about all th myriad things that go into making th musick i love so MUCH th musick i love when i hear it. it's th end result that justifies all those means - even tho all that human-ness is so integral to that end result - and is even so often exactly what's gorgeous about th end result! - and even tho i would never say that obfuscating th human element(s) (even in a kind of retroactive, listener's-view kinda way) is in any way th point (or beneficial).

so yeah, even tho it's human endeavor it ain't an AD for human endeavor. that's just one too many layers of modernity for me. dig?