The most prolific alt rock band in history?
They will shortly have competition
from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard,
but for now, I think they are the champions.
Guided By Voices, since the 80’s, have
released 40 studio albums, 30 of which
have been released in the last 25 years.
I have three Guided By Voices albums on
compact disc and my favorite one of these
on vinyl, the 1999 Do The Collapse,
produced by Ric Ocasek from The Cars.
Coming to Ric after a long history of
making lo-fi grungy records on which
Robert Pollard crammed as many short
little songs as he could on to an album,
(Alien Lanes from 1995 features 28 songs
and clocks in at just under 42 minutes),
Ric Ocasek, I think, gave them their first
record with a truly professional sheen
and maybe their first mega-hit with
the beautiful and sad “Hold On Hope.”
With all that prolific productivity you
might think the song ideas would
start to repeat themselves. There are
tons of artists with a tiny fraction
of this kind of output who are often caught
relying on certain tendencies and crutches,
finding it nearly impossible not to repeat
themselves. This does not seem to be
Robert Pollard’s problem. He manages
to simply crank out new power pop gems
like some kind of musical maniac and,
as far as my listening experience tells
me, he is very good at not repeating ideas.
His words are mostly obscure, nonsensical,
but his vocal melodies are inescapably
catchy and brilliant. Every tune on Do The
Collapse is a memorable little power pop gem.
Why do I only have a few albums by
Guided By Voices on CD, and only one on
vinyl, if I like them so much? Good question.
I think I get a little bit overwhelmed.
Over-saturation, I guess, has not been a bug
for them, rather it’s been a feature, but it might
be a bug for me. I probably buy too many
records as it is, and then I neglect them, and
that is essentially why I am attempting
to listen to every record in my collection.
I think I might go a little bit crazy if at this
point in my listening I was faced with 40
albums in a row by Guided By Voices.
Without them, perhaps, I can sufficiently,
more adamantly adore this almost perfect
record, Do The Collapse.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Do The Collapse, TVT Records, 1999, translucent orange vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 