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.
 

The (Very) Rough Guide to David Bowie

 
Every David Bowie album I've heard on a two point scale.




Space Oddity (1969) – Hit single + hippie folkie strumming junk. SUCKS

The Man Who Sold the World (1970) – Stiff compressed acid metal. RULES

Hunky Dory (1971) – Bent piano pop. RULES

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972) – Zippy crunchy space alien glam r-o-c-k. RULES

Aladdin Sane (1973) – Ziggy Pt. II, more guitar, less opera. RULES

Pin Ups (1974) – British Invasion covers. Go buy 'The Who Sell Out' instead. SUCKS

Diamond Dogs (1974) – Ziggy Pt. III but minus Mick Ronson and therefore SUCKS

Young Americans (1975) – Plastic Philly soul. SUCKS

Station to Station (1976) – Cocaine, Kraftwerk, and the roaring of trains. Genre: indescribable, or in other words, "What the hell is this?!" RULES

Low (1977) – Side One: Fragmented, spacey pioneering synth-pop. Side Two: Eno-ambient instrumentals. RULES

Heroes (1977) – Side One: Fragmented, spacey pioneering synth-pop. Side Two: Eno-ambient instrumentals. But not quite as good as Low. RULES

Lodger (1979) – More Eno-collaborationist synth-pop, but more fully fleshed out real songs, no instrumentals. RULES

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) – Same as before but more angular guitar hooks and deliberately mannered, off-key singing and not quite as good as the four albums preceding but still RULES. Sort of.

Let's Dance (1983) – '80s dance pop. This does not rule yet does not suck. It's OK

Tonight (1984) – '80s dance pop. SUCKS

Never Let Me Down (1987) – Springsteen lite mainstream rock. SUCKS

Tin Machine (1989) – Stiff compressed acid metal. SUCKS

Black Tie White Noise (1993) – New Jack Swing '90s dance pop. SUCKS

Outside (1994) – An old fart's idea of what Nine Inch Nails sound like. SUCKS

Earthling (1996) – An old fart's idea of what trendy club-goers drop ecstacy to. SUCKS



I haven't heard any of his new albums since then and frankly am not particularly interested. I'm assuming they all suck but I could be wrong.

Sonic Youth - Confusion is Sex

Sonic Youth 

Confusion is Sex (1983):  I've always hated this band.  OK, so Daydream Nation had its moments, but none of the other half dozen albums I've heard by them do anything but irritate me.  Their debut long player is no exception.  Even the track listing pisses me off – the songs aren't listed in correct order on the back cover, making me have to do that much extra work to figure out which title matches which song (which isn't that hard to do, actually, most of these songs have an identifiable chorus phrase).  There's a cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" that sounds like it's emanating from inside a garbage can with a scraping violin trying to claw the lid open, which is actually pretty awful but since "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is the greatest song of all time (this is objective fact; look it up), it's impossible to destroy.  That's the high point.  The low point is "Lee is Free" – that's the name of their drummer – that sounds like a two-year old banging around in the kitchen.  No, I'm not exaggerating, that's what the closing track literally consists of.  I wonder if they put the royalties for that toddler into a trust for college?

See, that's one difference between SY and the Fall, a similar sounding band that was a big influence (google "Psycho Mafia" and "Rowche Rumble" on youtube; Sonic Youth's cover versions aren't very good but at least respectable stabs.  Truly bizarre/awful is the Youth's version of the Kinks' "Victoria", kid you I not).  The Fall are above all a ferociously rhythm-driven band, with more killer bass lines in their career than any other band this side of James Jamerson.  Sonic Youth might as well not even have a rhythm section at all.  I can't remember a single memorable bass line Kim Gordon has ever plunked – she stereotypes "let me find my no-talent girlfriend a place to take up some token space in the band, guys, the bass is easy cuz it only has four strings".  And that's another difference – Mark E. Smith is a great vocalist (note I didn't say 'singer', I wouldn't go that far).  He may sound like a cranky old drunk ranting at the barstool, but that's his charm.  Nobody in Sonic Youth is a remotely compelling vocalist.  Kim always sings in a bored, sullen monotone and so does Thurston Moore only less distinctively so.  So what you're left with is a pile of distorted, clanging guitars creating a moody din, which sometimes can be interesting if attached to compellingly formed songs, otherwise Sonic Youth can come across as punk rock's answer to New Age (especially on their post-menopausal '90s and '00s records).  This one was recorded when the Youth in their Sonic wasn't entirely meant ironically, so it's got some actual energy to it.  But the songs are mostly uninteresting and uncompelling, so it's a boring, cling clangy drag. **

P.S.  I was just kidding about "Lee is Free".  Not about it sucking, though.

Iggy Pop - A Million in Prizes (the Anthology)

Iggy Pop

A Million in Prizes: the Anthology:  Let's face it, bloody rock god he may be, Iggy is simply not that blessed with a surfeit of talent. The three albums he recorded with the Stooges are far and away the pinnacle of his 4 decades-long (!) career, and he has never come close to topping them. Well, how could he? How could you top the band that for all practical purposes invented punk rock as we know it and took insane, overdriven, raw rock'n'roll to a precipice that few bands have reached since, despite millions trying? Needless to say, the first ten tracks drawn from the Stooges set a standard the remaining eighteen tracks on this two-disc platter don't have a chance of matching. In the late '70s Iggy hooked up with mega-Stooges fan David Bowie and recorded a pair of albums in Berlin that remain the only interesting records of his solo career. The music, written by Bowie (Iggy did the lyrics and vocal melodies), sounds unsurprisingly close to the gothy synth-pop Bowie was recording with Eno at the same time, and was not only hugely influential upon the '80s sound, but also sounds nothing at all like the generic hard rock that Iggy has purveyed for the remaining three decades of his unimaginative career. Selections from the Berlin-era albums take up the remainder of the first disc, which added to the Stooges era cuts make disc one an easy *****. Disc 2 inevitably disappoints, though there are enough stray good tracks to make it a reasonably enjoyable trawl through the desultory 1979-2005 years. But it's telling that the clear highlight is a 1993 live recording of the Stooges oldie, "TV Eye". So a *** for the second disc, which if you divide the two scores of the two discs comes out to an even ****





P.S. What?! You say you don't have any Stooges albums? WTF is wrong with you? You call yourself a rock fan?

Robert Pollard - Waved Out

Robert Pollard

Waved Out (1998): Like most people, I don't see the major distinction between Pollard solo and GBV albums, since he brings in members of the band to play on his solo records and writes all the material, same as in GBV.  This is another diary entry in Pollard's endless quest to jot down and record every note he's ever imagined, and it's a pretty good one.  It's darker and proggier and practically non-poppy compared to your typical GBV longplayer.  The songs are all full-length, fully fleshed out songs (no sub-minute snippets and fragments), and all uniformly moderately well produced.  There's a tad bit of throwaway silliness ("Showbiz Opera Walrus") but that's only one song; most of the rest of the material is atypically furrow-browed and dour.  As usual with Pollard, it takes repeated listens to sift the diamonds from the rough ("Subspace Biographies", "Wrinkled Ghost", the lounge-jazzy "People Are Leaving", "Rumbling Joker").  The heavy seriousness of the atmosphere and relative uniformity of the sound make it somewhat monotonous to sit through all the way to the end.  In other words, this is a CD that GBV fans will want to own, but non-fans should stick to Bee Thousand.  ***

The Box Tops - The Ultimate Box Tops

The Box Tops 

The Ultimate Box Tops

Before vaulting into cult legend heroism with Big Star, a teenage Alex Chilton sang lead for this much more commercially successful Memphis R&B band, which cut several hit singles and albums in the late '60s.  The sound is pure Memphis, gospel-soul as Mid-South as a barbecue at a tent revival, deep swirling church-soaked organs and truncated guitar licks backdropping Chilton's shockingly gruff, soulbellied growl that sounds a good ten to twenty years older than the callow teenager he actually was at the time.  If you've heard "The Letter", you should know what to expect – most of the rest follows in a similar vein, some a bit poppier and brighter ("Neon Rainbow"), "Cry Like a Baby" adding a touch of Tommy James & the Shondells-esque fake bubblegum psychedelia.  Like a lot of teen-market aimed singles acts from the '60s, the material and performances can be a bit hit and miss – the non-hit singles were non-hits for a reason – but even the slighter material is enjoyable.  Caveat emptor for Chiltonphiles:  Alex only wrote two of the fifteen songs on this comp, the juvenilia of "Together" and the older-than-his-years "I Must Be the Devil" that sounds like a jazzy blues standard (he probably ripped it off from some guy named King or Neville).  The only bummer is the closer "Rock Me Baby" which builds up a sweet, heavy groove but doesn't deserve to drag on for 9:16.  That may be a good length for the funky carnal deed the song is clearly intended to get your baby in the mood for, but 6 minutes too long for an AM-oriented pop act whose biggest hit was a sweetly concise 1:58.  ***1/2