{"id":5138,"date":"2020-12-31T20:35:18","date_gmt":"2021-01-01T02:35:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=5138"},"modified":"2020-12-31T20:35:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-01T02:35:18","slug":"guided-by-covid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=5138","title":{"rendered":"Guided by Covid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who&#8217;s been reading my posts for a while probably will remember how my music tastes hover around prog rock, japanese electronic rock, no-wave, contemporary classical music, outsider music, 90&#8217;s hip hop and selections of 60&#8217;s\/70&#8217;s pop. Scattered here and there is some fondness for a couple indie rock bands who manage to be more interesting than the others: I&#8217;m thinking the Dirty Projectors, Nnamdi, Thundercat etc&#8230; It&#8217;s rare that I get obsessed with a band that pretty much likes to <em>rock<\/em> straight ahead for the most part.<\/p>\n<p>I first heard Guided By Voices in 1997 when my buddy Adam tried to get me to open my horizons from hardcore and punk into the world of laid back &#8220;slacker&#8221; indie rock. I didn&#8217;t get it at the time. I remember Adam selling me on the lyrics to &#8220;My Valuable Hunting Knife&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ScR7x0m4Kxo\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I kind of got it but it quickly fell off my radar of interest. All those Matador bands blended together to me. They seemed like less talented versions of R.E.M., especially Pavement which now seems wildly inaccurate but hey, I still don&#8217;t like Pavement. I was more concerned with burning the world of meat-eaters down at the next Earth Crisis show.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5alVjhx-NoU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A few years later I lost all interest in hardcore bands and went full Japanese noise, prog, math rock and the Beach Boys. I started hanging out with Philly bar hipsters who went to Blonde Redhead shows and listened to John Fahey records. <\/p>\n<p>One day this guy Eric who was friends with my girlfriend Margaret reintroduced me to Guided By Voices and the album &#8220;Alien Lanes&#8221;. This time I was more receptive. I liked how the songs were like one minute long and sloppily edited into one another. It worked with my Beach Boys collage-composition worship. It still didn&#8217;t fully click with me but I was starting to hear them for more than just a relic of the 90&#8217;s indie rock &#8220;sound&#8221; which really isn&#8217;t what they were. Their musical ideas hew much closer to bands like the Move and The Who than Yo La Tengo (yawn). <\/p>\n<p>10 years or so go by. I&#8217;m sitting in my house dying from pandemic boredom. I&#8217;m re-watching all of the IT Crowd (great show btw). In one of the episodes the characters are jamming out to &#8220;Game of Pricks&#8221; from Alien Lanes. All of a sudden I was like &#8220;Fuuck. Guided By Voices could write a fucking SONG. FUCK!&#8221; I mean for real. Every savvy music listener probably knows this song, but fuck if it gives the Beatles a run for their money. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IlZlst4NBVw\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Immediately I went to my computer and researched the GBV catalog. I re-listened to Alien Lanes, jamming HARD to track after track of God inspired lo-fi powerpop&#8230; and then holy shit there&#8217;s like 100 albums. I started reading reviews and top 10, top 25 lists of their catalog. It was like looking into a dark ocean of murky throwaway jams speckled with moments of rock genius; a similar problem when trying to dig through R. Stevie Moore&#8217;s monstrous catalog. Good thing I&#8217;m trapped in my house and there is nothing to do right now! <\/p>\n<p>So this was about 3 weeks ago. I&#8217;ve made it my mission to comb through their 90&#8217;s era and really get a grasp of those albums. After that I&#8217;ll move on to their largely neglected 00&#8217;s era and try to mine the gems. So many people have written about and celebrated Robert Pollard&#8217;s group of near-boomer aged rockers, so why am I throwing in my two cents about it? Well, because there&#8217;s fucking nothing to do right now and I&#8217;m in love with so many of these songs. It&#8217;s amazing to me to hear a band that just rocks hard and manages to not be boring to me. For a band to do that, means they must have that extra &#8220;It&#8221; that other straight rockin&#8217; bands just don&#8217;t have. I&#8217;m talking crappy bands like Kurt Vile, War on Drugs, U2, The Band, you get it right? Bands that just play straight ahead and celebrate the idea of ROCK. These bands are so boring. So what is it about GBV that makes them better? In some ways I almost consider them the greatest American rock band. I was trying to think of a better American rock band. It feels weird to say it, but I can&#8217;t. I like them more than the Pixies. The Beach Boys&#8217; great moments are scattered all over a catalog of inconsistent fallout from the Smile sessions. Every other great American band is limited to maybe 2 or 3 great albums. Neil Young has moments of brilliance and beauty that is diluted by huge chunks of banal bar rock. All the best bands came from Europe honestly and I&#8217;m not comparing GBV to reactionary groups like the Stick Men. <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/XgccMrmcPJk\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m talking about bands that continued that 60&#8217;s radio rock ideology of uh&#8230; rocking, and not sounding like King Crimson or Black Flag or an aneurysm on the other side of the spectrum. <\/p>\n<p>Somewhere in-between GBV at their best show an endless reservoir of melodic chops mixed with butter churning (what?) waves of rock caught on heavy tape hiss that synthesizes it into bite sized ear worm majesty. Please put this song on headphones and listen to it really loud!<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HKC7O2HMLo4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>So what have I discovered so far about their 90&#8217;s output? Well people keep saying &#8220;Bee Thousand&#8221; is their &#8220;perfect album&#8221;. It&#8217;s number one on most critic lists, but I have to disagree. I think it&#8217;s obvious that Alien Lanes has all the jams. It&#8217;s the album most people seem to be familiar with for a reason. The songs just pop hard. I feel like listening to Alien Lanes is what indoctrinates you to the Robert Pollard school of songwriting. It&#8217;s the key to unlocking their wider catalog for me at least. After Alien Lanes and Bee Thousand it&#8217;s much easier to gobble up the tracks and band mythology surrounding Propeller, then start cherry picking the best bits of Vampire on Titus, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, Tonics and Twisted Chasers, and the tragically produced Do the Collapse. <\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a couple key tracks from this era:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u5jcydEdels\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/sJ6yS71j-cw\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bg6ohMHLwsU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gB7r6Xo5Vqw\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JKsPHJNjnBU\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dSYQO_f6wVc\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anyone who&#8217;s been reading my posts for a while probably will remember how my music tastes hover around prog rock, japanese electronic rock, no-wave, contemporary classical music, outsider music, 90&#8217;s hip hop and selections of 60&#8217;s\/70&#8217;s pop. Scattered here and there is some fondness for a couple indie rock bands who manage to be more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5138"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5143,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5138\/revisions\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}