798. Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes (1995)

Track Listing

1. A Salty Salute
2. Evil Speakers
3. Watch Me Jumpstart
4. They're Not Witches
5. As We Go Up, We Go Down
6. (I Wanna Be A) Dumbcharger
7. Game of Pricks
8. The Ugly Vision
9. A Good Flying Bird
10. Cigarette Tricks
11. Pimple Zoo
12. Big Chief Chinese Restaurant
13. Closer You Are
14. Auditorium
15. Motor Away
16. Hit
17. My Valuable Hunting Knife
18. Gold Hick
19. King and Caroline
20. Striped White Jets
21. Ex-Supermodel
22. Blimps Go 90
23. Strawdogs
24. Chicken Blows
25. Little Whirl
26. My Son Cool
27. Always Crush Me
28. Alright

Review

Look at the size of that track list! And it's not a very long album, and it's not a hardcore album as well! It's just that there is an extreme economy of music in each song. And from the lo-finess of the whole thing an economy of budget as well.

In fact lo-fi works as an advantage here. If this was over produced it would not have half the charm it does now. Guided by Voices use everything, from psychedelia to jangly pop to rock is what is a smorgasbord of tiny but very well made tracks.

This is one of those albums that you need to listen to repeatedly in order to get, the songs go by so fast that you cannot form an opinion at a first listen. For example the great Cigarette Tricks lasts for 18 seconds. When you have given it the effort it needs and definitely deserves this becomes a very rewarding collection of tracks, with a great sense of harmony and melody as well as some great lyrics. Highly Recommended!

Track Highlights

1. Blimps Go 90
2. As We Go Up We Go Down
3. Auditorium
4. Closer You Are

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The album was GBV's first release with Matador Records. According to James Greer's book Guided by Voices: A Brief History: Twenty-One Years of Hunting Accidents in the Forests of Rock and Roll the advance for the record was close to a hundred thousand dollars, one of the more expensive deals in Matador's history. In contrast to the lucrative deal, Greer mentions that "The cost for recording Alien Lanes, if you leave out the beer, was about ten dollars."

Auditorium/Motor Away: