Guided By Voices - King Shit & the Golden Boys

King Shit and the Golden Boys (1988-1993) – Unreleased odds and sods from the years indicated above, this is actually more consistent and a hell of a lot more interesting than any of the first four proper LPs. Digging through the junk pile to find the gems is half the fun of being a GBV fan and the golden boys outweigh the shit in this particular pile. Actually, the more I listen to it, the more this coheres as a concept album: Pollard’s tribute to Wire. It hit me when realizing how much “Squirmish Frontal Room” sounded like a Chairs Missing outtake. Short tracks more fragments than fully realized songs and angular melodies/riffs rubbing against the room as abrasively as sandpaper – yeah, it’s no coincidence that Pollard once named Wire’s Pink Flag as his favorite album, as a whole buncha tunes owe an obvious debt to that ur-ArtPunk classic. Anyway, there aren’t really any top-tier GBV tunes found around here and there’s definitely quite a bit of dross and half-baked experimentation, so it’s definitely for GBV fans than casual acquaintances. Not that a casual listener would be listening to this in the first place, since it’s only available as part of the boxed set. ***

Guided By Voices - Same Place the Fly Got Smashed

Same Place the Fly Got Smashed (1990) – The real downer in the GBV catalog, all of the songs are about drunks and the misery of alcoholism. Perhaps sticking to a concept forced Pollard to focus – this isn’t up to prime GBV quality, but it’s a considerable improvement. For once the lyrics are understandably about something, not just random stream of consciousness gibberish, and while the band’s playing is still garage-level (as is the lo-fi production), the advances in songwriting make this the best of the early GBV LP litter. It’s still inconsistent and half-assed in plenty of spots, but there are a clutchful of GBV classics: anthemic rocker, “The Hard Way”; miserable self-pitying ballads “When She Turns 50” (“I might be dead”) and “Drinker’s Peace” in which sounding like it was recorded in a cellar closet actually enhances the feeling of cold, spare desolation. GBV seem to be learning for the first time how to use poor recording quality to their sonic advantage and there are enough hints of future greatness (the shimmering pop that ends the record, “How Loft I Am?”) to make this there first genuinely good album. It’s not all the way there but listenability is finally achieved. ***

Guided By Voices - Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia (1989) – If Sandbox suffered from excessive sonic consistency, this one’s all over the place: aside from the lo-fi demo quality of it all, one track barely sounds like another. The overall impression is that the band doesn’t have a clue what the hell they are doing – they’re just entering their basement studio, plugging in, and seeing if any of the songs stick. Unfortunately, most of them don’t – the heavily reverbated ballad “Liar’s Tale” is the only song among this batch that makes a memorably impression on my ears. And the band hadn’t yet figured out how to make the lo-fi aesthetic work for them instead of against them – the Radio Shack quality of the recordings is just plain ugly. There are a handful of bright spots if you bother digging, but why bother? *1/2

Guided By Voices - Sandbox

Sandbox (1987) – This one’s better because the band decided to try recording a proper album as a proper band. That means no tossed off jams filling up space. Instead, GBV go for a straightforward hard-rock approach, and that’s the problem – it’s not as if they aren’t any good as a straightforward hard-rock band, it’s just that they aren’t terribly interesting as an ordinary rock band. There aren’t the quirky edges and curveballs of your typical GBV release; just one mid-tempo rocker after the other. Some stand out (“The Drinking Jim Crow”) but the melodies are squashed and the guitar sound is too stiff and dry (a problem they’d revisit a decade later on the Mag Earwhig! LP). The best song, “Long Distance Man” is laidback pop with a terrific chorus that sounds nothing like the surrounding tracks. The most consistent of their early LPs, which isn’t necessarily a compliment – too samey-samey. **1/2

Guided By Voices - Devil Between My Toes

Devil Between My Toes (1987) – The instant your ears hit the first tune of this disc you realize what a massive debt early GBV owe to early R.E.M. – the good songs on this release mostly sound like homages to Reckoning, with hard-hitting jangly guitar hooks and loping melodies and Pollard’s Michael Stipe steely drawl. The problem with this album is easily diagnosed: about half of this is half-assed crap. “Hey, Hey Spaceman” which floats to the ionosphere with its du-du-du-du McCartneyesque melody and the charmingly cradle-bouncy “Hank’s Little Fingers” are two of their best-ever tunes, particularly “Spaceman” which is my favorite GBV song, and most of the other songs are pretty good. That is, when they get around to writing songs – about half of this record consists of pointless instrumentals which sound like amateurs dicking around in the basement (which of course is exactly what they are). Quality control has never been Pollard’s strong point but this is perhaps the worst example of him sabotaging his brilliance for little pop gems by releasing every idea he sets his guitar to. **

Guided By Voices - Box (introduction)

During their first half decade or so of existence, GBV were more of a hobby than a working band, rarely (if ever?) playing live gigs and self-releasing vinyl copies of their LPs at press runs in the low hundreds. Their legendary lo-fi sound wasn’t intentional, but an economic necessity borne out of a fourth grade teacher and his drinking buddies recording in garages and basements and locker rooms and closets and wine cellars and outhouses. This 5-CD box set collects the first four albums (but, curiously enough, not their first 1986 EP) and a bonus disc of outtakes. Robert Pollard has admitted that all of these early releases deserve a 1 star rating, but he’s being overly harsh – a 2 star average rating is more like it.

They got better, believe me.  But onto the reviews.