Guided by Voices
Alien Lanes

THE REVIEW

"The cost for recording Alien Lanes, if you leave out the beer, was about ten dollars." [James Greer]

The aesthetic of wasted talent gives way to the aesthetic of sketch and familial acoustics. Not the unfinished.

Why be professional when you can be amateur? Economic indigence inaugurated lo-fi. And liberated listening from the listener to play in the rain bouncing off the glass.

We are in Dayton, Ohio. A ray of sunshine pierces the agricultural machinery factories. A siren announces the change of shift at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Robert Pollard, elementary school teacher, turns thirty and decides to record, at his own expense, 300 copies of “Devil Between My Toes”. And he will continue to record obsessively on an occasional four-tracks. Overcoming the only true Hamletian doubt: to be badass or to be a pain in the ass?

Garage rock, folk rock, punk and post-punk with hands of rain, psychedelic pop.

Slippery, idiosyncratic. Guided by the voices.

An Albion side filled with Beatles marches, the part-time service of Television Personalities and, again, super Buzzcocksian singles clashes with the third and fourth Velvets, R.E.M.'s closed eyes, with the insane and deficient idiom of Devo (yes, the compatriots distracted Pollard from the youthful love sworn to Genesis, Yes, and EL&P).

The exit from the boundaries of the city circuit was thanks to the seventh work “Bee Thousand”, confirmed, alongside the move to Matador, by the insinuating audacity of this “Alien Lanes” (1995).

Vignettes, melodic miniatures supported by a false sense of experimentation, raw and dirty guitar, wave bass, paradoxically Beatlesque vocal harmonies where the setting is totally anti-Beatles, psychedelic hints, hermetic lyrics, a quiet snoring, a song on the edge of bathtub water, imitations of Michael Stipe, echoes of emaciated Hollies, pseudo-heavy riffs (Tobin Sprout's contribution is important), the power of a “Helter Skelter” interrupted by acoustic chimes; an overwhelming carelessness extended in an increasingly rock direction. Twenty-eight songs averaging a minute and a half in a flow of strange but firm coherence.

Pollard hides or barely shows himself like Alice's cat.

And ”clio clio pavoncella fa su e disfa”: "As We Go Up, We Go Down", "Game of Pricks", "Pimple Zoo", "Ex-Supermodel", "Strawdogs", “Chicken Blows", “My Valuable Hunting Knife” are all ”rays, prominences, births”.

In short: lovable idiocy or brilliant haphazardness? Or their synthesis and overcoming?

I am breathing, yet I feel no sky
Things without wings have begun to fly
Unhitched trailers---I see trailers trail
From the well i pull an empty pail
Little man bleeding, little heart beating so
Evil speaker blow my circuits---oh no
Brothers, sisters---all transistors, you know
Father logic sometimes gets cosmic, you know

(Trad. Sto respirando, eppure non sento il cielo
Le cose senza ali hanno cominciato a volare
Rimorchi sganciati --- Vedo orme di rimorchi
Dal pozzo tiro su un secchio vuoto
Piccolo uomo sanguinante, piccolo cuore che batti così
Il cattivo altoparlante soffia sui miei circuiti --- oh no
Fratelli, sorelle - tutti transistor, lo sapete
La logica del padre a volte diventa cosmica, lo sai)