Customer Reviews

Alien Lanes

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Some people refer to "Bee Thousand" as Guided By Voices' crowning acheivement. I myself have to disagree. Alien Lanes has the same undefinable vibe that makes albums like The Beatles "Revolver" and White album so great. The songs flow together like one 40 plus minute mini rock opera. I don't think I can listen to songs like "Motor Away" w/o starting off with "Auditorium". Songs like "My Valuable Hunting Knife" and "Blimps Go 90" are songs that even the greatest songwriters of our time couldn't write in a million years. Even the songs that don't stand out at first you find yourself singing along w/ like the national anthem after the 30th listen. If you like pop music a la the Beatles, the Who, Big Star, R.E.M. and have a short attention span than this might as well be the only album you ever own.

I recently caved in to some burning curiosity and got the pair _Bee Thousand_ and _Alien Lanes_ used, being given to understand that those are their two best. At first listen to them both, my reaction was "This is just junk! To put this in the same boat with, say, Yo La Tengo is just ludicrous!" And I couldn't be more amazed with how my outlook turned around after about the third listen.

At first, when I was still getting into them, I thought I liked _Bee Thousand_ better, but when it really finally hit me, it was this one. I mean, _Bee Thousand_ has tons of great, great songs (I've yet to hear a GBV album that doesn't), but it's a little more on the acoustic side than I'd prefer, whereas _Alien Lanes_ just absolutely *rocks out* and *does not look back*! After the aforementioned third or fourth listen, I was addicted. The tunes here are amazing, and so incredibly prolific (on just one album out of so many!), I can hardly begin to name songs. These songs just grab hold of your brain and *do not let go*! The 'challenging' production really delays the effect as you get used to it, but once you do, it's like... like... well, like nothing I've ever experienced--like hearing music for the first time. I am not exaggerating. And now I'm hopelessly addicted to the incredible tune stylings and workmanship of Mr. Bob Pollard, dammit. ;) So, this is fair warning--don't start with them unless you're willing to shell out $150 or so (at least) when you get hooked and have to buy their entire discography.

Commitment trailblazer... you are such a daredevil... and you are such a collector...

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.

If you don't love this album, i seriously wonder about you. It is like one, long, nonstop beauty of pop. The 28 little pieces of perfection add up to one wonderful 41 minutes and 15 seconds. Once you pop this in, you WILL NOT stop it until it's done. You start seeing Robert Pollard as a genius, and wondering how he became so prolific. How come he is able to just spout out a million perfect melodies, one after the other? If you don't think lo-fi stuff is you, then you will after hearing this. It's messy, yes, but each little mess or note he hits off key, or off beat, becomes an essential part of the album's overall feel. It wouldn't be the same without it. And by the way, the lyrics are simply unparalleled wackiness! Just take a look at the song titles. "Game of Pricks", "Closer you Are", "My Valuable Hunting Knife," and "Blimps Go 90" are some favorites, and as with most of their songs, they're short and sweet, so much so, that you're actually disappointed when they end! You just keep wanting more, but you definitely get it all here. This will always be in my top ten list, and is the best cd to start with if you've never heard GBV. I know every word, every note of this cd. But it wasn't my fault i learned them, i just listened, and listened....

have hoisted the flag/we are with you in your anger"

so begins gbv's umpteenth album, and though it is often derided critically as an unworthy successor to bee thousand - a meretricious attempt to capture the glory of the album that preceded it - i think one could argue that alien lanes nearly rivals bee thousand in its genius. present, as in any other gbv effort, is a certain number of filler-tracks but whereas those songs seemed to occur towards the tail-end of bee thousand, they are dispersed evenly between the better songs on the album. though some tracks are noticeably better than others, none of the songs are in any sense bad, nor are they beyond worth listening to - they just simply aren't as impressive as songs like (here goes a rather long list, gentlemen) "salty salute," "evil speakers," "watch me jumpstart," "they're not witches," "as we go up we go down," "game of pricks," "good flying bird," "closer you are," "motor away," "my invaluable hunting knife," "striped-white jets," and "little whirl." for my money, though, pollard has never written a better song than "blimps go 90," and when that song finally came skipping gallantly across my speakers i immediately realized that alien lanes is every bit as good as bee thousand (on some days even better).

if you're prone to gbv's more erratic, impulsive lo-fi 4-track work (everything preceding under the bushes under the stars, really) then alien lanes is indispensible listening, something you would be wise to obtain as soon as possible. permit pollard's melodies to swim lithely around your head, allow them to invade you and start you to a hum and your days will be a shade or two brighter. what benefits pollard's music and what differentiates it from other contemporary acts is that a guided by voices album has a certain reciprocity to it, they make albums that entice you with their charms, albums which are made to be held dearly and loved unerringly. their albums are testaments to the divinity of music, the religious aspect of rock music that allows you to transcend everything that is humdrum and monochromatic about your life; you can recline and lie prostrate on the floor, your body inert and motionless, and allow their music to sweep over you and surge speedily into the little pores in your head with swirling melodies and propulsive riffs. it is this purity, this gaiety, this undiminished shout which edges guided by voices ahead of nearly every other musical act of the 90s - the intimacy of their albums in an era predominantly pocked by flannel-wearing apathy and aggressive, us-against-them posturing discerns them as one of the greatest, criminally ignored bands of a decade riddled with fodder (ahem, nirvana).

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!

Now let's face it, Bee Thousand was totally unexpected. Yes! This 1994 critic's darling upped the anty considerably on these low-fi pop masters. So with the world watching, how do you follow up a masterstroke? Well...

Robert Pollard's idea was to take a series of very short songs to make a LONG album... The pieces flow into one another usually at about a minute and a half... sort of like the classic Minutemen albums. But the sound is still very GBV, and amid the continuous song fly-bys are many of their classics: "Watch Me Jumpstart", "Striped White Jets", "As We Go Up We Go Down", "The Closer You Are". Of course, you also have some annoying bits, but they're over (some within 12 seconds!)soon enough.

So it can be said that Pollard DID successfully follow up Bee Thousand by creating an interesting event unlike any he had done before. If catchy, quick pop numbers is your cup of tea, precede to Alien Lanes immediately!

The 28-track epic "Alien Lanes" is truly a classic. Of course, the first listen, only tracks like "My Valuable Hunting Knife" "Game of Pricks" "A Good Flying Bird" and others will stick out, but the whole album,is a gem of low-fi pop craftsmanship. Genius frontman Robert Pollard has through each of the short tracks been able to thread together an album of astounding clarity, eccentricity,and beauty. Motor away, boys.