Customer Reviews

Propeller

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

GBV do indeed summon the ghosts of Big Rock's past, doing it at a time when maybe it wasn't so cool to recall old Gabriel-era Genesis, Floyd, and other fantastic dinosaurs. But though they do so with humor and a 4-track, they do it with love. But that's not all! You also get your favorites from the 60's--Kinks, Zombies, the Who are more of the voices guiding this merry band of melodic miscreants. The other reviews here make good references to the record's highlights. But if you consider yourself a GBV fan and you don't have this record, don't even THINK about buying something else. Propeller, Bee Thousand, and Alien Lanes are THE quintessential GBV records--and some of the best records of the last decade.

How anybody could say this is anything less than essential GBV is completely beyond me. This is EASILY the equal of both "Bee Thousand" and "Alien Lanes" and is actually more of a well-rounded album than either. Sure, there is a small handful of filler tunes, but they're more like "breathers" in between the adrenaline rush of Pollard's most effortless sounding melodies. You want rockers? Try "Large Hearted Boy", "Exit Flagger", "Quality Of Armor." Stoned arena rock anthems? Try "Over the Neptune" or "Circus World." Bizarro cut-and-paste experiments? Try "Back to Saturn X." Make no mistake, this is homemade and the sound is a bit claustrophobic, but taken as a whole it's an incredible artifact of DIY American underground rock. It's all here folks; the beloved early GBV at their grittiest, funniest, and strangest, spilling forth with unforgetable melodies and some of the best lyrics in the history of rock music. If you don't like this you must have honey in your ears, or something like that!

Strangely, Guided by Voices were NOT the overnight success that some thought they were in 93/94 with the releases of Vampire on Titus and Bee Thousand. In fact, they had been struggling around Dayton, Ohio since 1986 privately pressing albums of 1,000 copies or less to local (but increasing rabid) fans. Over these five albums GBV went from basically an R.E.M./Soft Boys tribute band (1987's Devil Between my Toes and Sandbox)to finally gaining some originality (1989's Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia) and eventually producing a terrificly somber "drinking" album (90's Same Place the Fly Got Smashed)that established them as artists to be reckoned with. Any with interest to explore these hit and miss releases (except Fly, which somebody should reissue)should try to find a copy of the deleted Box, which has all of these plus an album of mostly questionable outtakes called King Shit and the Golden Boys. Most of the world should start with Propeller.

You know ! this is a whole new band the moment a faux crowd chants "GBV...GBV" at the start of the amazing "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox" which is five and a half minutes of everything you ever liked about the seventies. The rest of the album just continues this high mark, with three should of been singles ("Quality of Armor", "Exit Flagger" and "Unleashed! the Large Hearted Boy")highlighting a host of terrific songs. The band only hits the dark realms of Fly on "Lethargy!" and "Some Drilling Implied" which are loud bass driven screamers. But then, most everything is loud (except the pretty "Red Gas Circle" and Tobin Sprout's first song, "14 Cheerleader Coldfront"), and the only things that DON'T work is the sound collage "Saturn X" and the strange "Over the Tundra".

From here, GBV got signed by Scat, took over the hearts of critics, and ended up releasing some amazing r! ecords. But it was here that they came into full flourish,! and it should not be missed by anybody. Especially if you have a thing for power pop...

All good kids must have this record. Simply the best of the GBV catalog, but Bee Thousand is the best place to start. You should buy them both, along with Alien Lanes and Under the Bushes and call it a summer. You will not need any other CDs because to appreciate the full range of value you will have to listen to them incessantly for at least 2-3 months. Best of luck finding the right type of work to allow for the listening and record buying you will need. At least the touring might slow now that Bob is solo, but probably not since I fear he has quit smoking.

The first time I listened to this album I hated it. Stuck in a car for four hours driving through the middle of nowhere, I had no choice but to listen to it once again. Not sure what happened in the interim, but holy moly - this is the best damn album on the planet.

That was five years ago, and every time I listen to Propeller I find my heart soaring and have a wildly devilish grin on my face. It's actually come to the point that I no longer let myself listen to it on my Itunes at work. I simply get too excited and amped and then can't get anything done. Who would have thought that one band could make - in the span of one record - tunes that connect deeply to my midwestern classic rock heart AND tickle the part of my brain that is sorely unexploited by music today - weird ideas, disconnected chords, garbled fuzz, and practically incoherent ramblings.

I absolutely love it. I will raise my kids to love this record. If only all music could be this youthful, risky, and of -the-moment. Screw corporate alternative rock. Screw the need for tunes to be "perfect." I'm a 31-year-old woman writing from a professional office wearing pressed clothes, and all I want to do is listen to this record and rock the **** out. If you're reading this comment from a similar scenario, buy the album and have a great day.

If you're unfamiliar with Guided By Voices, this isn't a bad place to begin. Propeller is on par with GBV's best output and is a bit more propulsive and energetic than most of their offerings. There are a couple tossers on here, as you might expect, but even those have some sort of quirk that make them oddly compelling. In terms of the sheer quality of song writing, I think Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand have an edge, but I think this is probably GBV's funnest album, and the one that best captures their whimsical arena-rock-god wannabe, half-hearted make-it-up-as-you-go-along, drunken good time spirit. It's certainly one of the essentials for GBV fans along with Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, and Isolation Drills.

This musical effort by Guided by Voices is another very good album that combines raw, low production sound with 1960's style rock and a few dashes of metal here and there to create a unique sound. The music on this album is varied, with some songs performed with nothing but acoustic guitar, some with electric guitar power chords, some short, some long, etc.

The best songs on this collection would include "On the Tundra", "Weedking", and "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox". On many of the songs, lead singer Bob Pollard's vocals have an English sound to them- something Pollard is known for from time to time. The British accent, combined with the 1960's rock and roll sound of some songs, makes tunes like "On the Tundra" and others sound like British invasion hits from thirty years ago.

Much of the music on Propeller is much like that on "Alien Lanes", both in production and in musical style and sound. I like "Alien Lanes" a little more than "Propeller", but I agree with most of the reviewers here that "Propeller" is still a very good album and one that belongs in the collection of every Guided by Voices fan.

No, this is not, track-for-track, a perfect rock record. In addition to the usual GBV filler, 'Propeller' loses steam over the last 3 or 4 tracks. Regardless, when this album works, I think it captures everything that made so many people so excited about Guided by Voices in the mid-90's. The best moments on the rest of their lo-fi albums don't seem quite as ambitious or as satisfying as the peaks of 'Propeller.' "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox" especially demonstrates what I'm talking about: a nearly 6-minute tribute to Cheap Trick and Genesis, recorded in a garage by a bunch of "old" guys from Ohio, with defiantly elaborate 4-track production (notice how that third guitar pops up just before the fadeout?). Where do these guys get off thinking they can make music like this? And there's more: "Metal Mothers" is probably the best straight-ahead rocker they've ever recorded, "Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy" would probably be the best song on any other GBV release from this era, and "Weed King" remains my favorite example of Bob's fractured lyricism.

In the final analysis, then, I love this album because it sounds to me like that one where Bob and the guys really pushed themselves; the songs remain catchy to this day, but there was a time when "catchy" wasn't enough. There was a time when Guided by Voices convincingly proclaimed that average, ordinary guys didn't have to be any more ordinary than they wanted. How do you record a song as expansive, as ambitious as "Over the Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox," a song that promises so much, knowing that about 50 of your friends might hear it in your lifetime? For those 6 minutes they shake all that off; for those 6 minutes they were exactly the greatest band in the world, which is all Bob really wanted before he decided it was easier to cater to the diehards. That's the aura that every track on this album, even the lesser ones, gives off. And that's why it's my favorite Guided by Voices record.

This CD comes in pretty low on my GBV totem pole. I would have given it 2 stars, but hey, it is at least 1 star better than Vampire on Titus, which is a tosser in my book. I own just about everything from these guys, but basically never listen to this CD -- and believe me, I really tried to like it. I found about 4 songs that excelled, but the rest were mediocre by GBV standards. I am not here to slag the other reviewers, but to say that there is at least one big time GBV fan that really doesn't like all their work. Go for Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes if you are into their minimalist sound. Under the Bushes, Under the Stars for a more polished and consistent effort.

Drink a twelve-pack, crank this up hard, and you might get it. Audacious and simultaneously rock-bottom real, you can pass out and collapse over this album and it'll hold your sorry self miraculously up out of the spew you made, forever if need be. Thank God for Robert Pollard.