Here's part of John Mulvey's review of the new box set (their third!) from Guided By Voices, Hardcore UFOs, from The Wire:
At their best, they present meticulously crafted songs with all the spontaneity and never to be repeated excitement of improvised music...While there's the "It's Only Rock 'N Roll" camp -- and if you've ever seen them live, there's no question regarding that -- I'm inclined to be among the "Surely it can't be that straightforward" folks.Yet it would be wrong to see GBV's music as an avant garde re-imagining of rock history. What propels their finest performances isn't self-consciousness -- [Robert] Pollard saves that for the freshman surrealism of his song titles -- but an apparently naive, instinctual grasp of what some guys, some gear and electricity can create. Tellingly, the essays accompanying Hardcore UFOs don't dwell on theory, or on Pollard's peculiar compunction to call his every fragment of melody a song. Instead, the writers focus on bleary memories of bonding over old records, sport and inland oceans of American beer. GBV are just a bunch of Midwesterners hammering away in the garage, goes the subtext, and Pollard is a genius comfortable in the body of Everyman.
Surely it can't be that straightforward. Siltbreeze label head Tom Lax's tale of GBV playing a tiny Philadelphia gig in exchange for his copy of Amon Duul's Yeti suggests Pollard has more esoteric tastes than most teachers in the Dayton area. And what of songtitles like Catfood On The Earwig", "The Ascended Masters Grogshop", '14 Cheerleader Coldfront"? Their scrupulous eccentricity confirms Pollard as an only partially suppressed aficionado of Prog rock as well as psychedelic whimsy.
Check out the lyrics of "Wire Greyhounds," for instance (from the 2002 album Universal Truths and Cycles:
My tongue that moves slow
A minute before the evil street
Breath woman captures a ghost
Blurring sweat heads eat noodlestuff
Sit up and beg
For slivers of language
That the night air might offer
Pin back your ears
And feed...
The man's a poet.
Posted by the wily filipino at November 8, 2003 03:33 PM