Guided By Voices

Late in Bee Thousand, Guided by Voices singer/songwriter Robert Pollard provides a
skeleton key to his remarkable music. "I am a pharmacist, prescriptions I will fill you," he
sings, "potions, pills and medicines to ease your painful lives." It's no empty boast – the
stately little hymn "I Am a Scientist" and the 19 other sublime songs on this album possess
just such restorative powers. GBV's seven previous albums (released in limited e... More >

On most of these 20-tracks-in-36-minutes, the tunes emerge if you stick around, but they're undercut by multiple irritants. The lyrics are deliberately obscure, the structures deliberately foreshortened, the vocals a record collector's Anglophilia-in-the-shower; the rec-room production is so inconsistent you keep losing your bearings, as befits resident art-rock fan Robert Pollard's boast (which echoes Lou Barlow's, what a coincidence) that some recordings aren't just first takes but first plays, of songs he'd dreamed up since the last time the band came over. In short, this is pop for perverts--pomo smarty-pants too prudish and/or alienated to take their pleasure without a touch of pain to remind them that they're still alive. (Grade: B-)