Guided by Voices - 'Alien Lanes' (Matador)

I hit a bit of a lull in this blog, because I was suddenly struck by how pointless and/or difficult it is to write about Alien Lanes. I mean, this is another mammoth formative record in my life, a record I have beaten into my brain for twenty years now, and without ever wavering in my love for it. But the show must go on, so I'll try to formulate something here that is worth your time, a screed to justify the RSS bandwidth you may be reading this over. So, yeah, Alien Lanes. I'll say one thing -- it is a testament to the heralded 'lo-fi' recording techniques that this record sounds exactly the same every time I play it, even though the grooves have to be worn out more than anything else on my shelves, and also regardless of which type of sound-reproducin' equipment I play it on. Yes, ever since I snuck away from my high school's class visit to the College Faire (a trade show where various shitty local/ish institutions of higher learning set up tables and tried to talk us into applying to them) and purchased this, shrinkwrapped and new, I've been enthralled by its vision. This was supposed to be the start of GbV phase two (or three?), after Bee Thousand brought them notoriety, but really it's the penultimate gasp of their period of truest greatness. Alien Lanes is the perfect synthesis of everything they did, which includes wyrd folk-ish experiments ('They're Not Witches', 'Big Chief Chinese Restaurant'), perfect bubblegum ('Game of Pricks', 'My Valuable Hunting Knife'), 60s throwbacks ('As We Go Up We Go Down'), a few stunning Sprout songs ('A Good Flying Bird', 'Straw Dogs'), a few of Pollard's most iconic Pollard rock masterpieces ('Watch Me Jumpstart', 'Motor Away', 'My Son Cool'), some very fragmented-yet-rewarding sketches ('Gold Hick', 'Cigarette Tricks'), intentionally dumb rockers (surprising live favourite 'Pimple Zoo'), some rather experimental sci-fi songforms ('Auditorium', 'Hit') - as well as one of the greatest opening cuts ever ('A Salty Salute') and one of the most forgettable closers ('Alright'). And just before that, labeled as 'presumed throwaway', the stark, chilling 'Always Crush Me', which is almost showoffy - like bragging about the full extent of one's genius. And all the tracks I didn't mention, which are almost uniformly great and sound great when singing along to (let's name 'Blimps Go 90', 'King & Caroline', 'Closer You Are', 'Evil Speakers' because I like typing the titles almost as much as I like listening to them). And shitty album artwork that looks like it was done in Corel Draw (I bet it was, it was 1996 after all!). It's a complete package. One of my favourite memories is sitting around in a car, on tour with some friends' band, in 2005 I think, and listening to this while pantomiming hand motions to act out the lyrics. It was a brotherhood united by our love for this record and it's infinite mysteries, earworm-generating inspiration, and awe-inducing imagery. And it was fun to pretend to park a forklift, 'like a billion stars flickering from the grinder's wheel', though I don't remember the specific hand gesture to go with that one. Please play 'My Son Cool' at my funeral, and I wish they would have played 'Motor Away' at my birth. No, 'Watch Me Jumpstart'. Watch Me Continue to find inspiration twenty years into my lifetime bond with this masterpiece. Thanks.

Faust - 'IV' (Virgin)

The Nurse With Wound list taught us that Faust was not so singular; there were plenty of demented Euro-freaks throughout the entire wonderful 1970s making music that defied logic or categorisation. What made Faust so special was their impact - as a high-profile act, with records on Virgin and singing in English, their brand of madness could seep into a larger market than the so-called 'underground'. IV is really where you hear that - at times their most accessible record, with plaintive ballads such as 'Jennifer', and pop-skews like 'The Sad Skinhead' (which actually makes me think of the Homosexuals and their deconstructed song-based genius), but also opening with the 12-minute blast of 'Krautrock'. Tongue-in-cheek title aside, this track more or less invented the 'ecstatic drone' genre, or whatever you would call artists twenty-plus years later such as Skullflower, Total, Sunroof, Double Leopards, etc. It's not like any of the other dark, dense jams of its time apart from maybe some Japanese artists - the horizontality is more akin to minimalist composition, but the edges are poking out everywhere, nothing sanded down. It's somehow an entirely different beast than 'Sister Ray', too; there's less affect, if that makes any sense; it's muddy and fuzzy and endlessly replayable. The rest of the record is no slouch - 'Giggy Smile' is a jam of jams, and 'It's a Bit of a Pain' is a beautiful way to go out.  The rock parts have a warm, wooly recording and when there's electronic fuckery ('Picnic on a Frozen River') it sounds as soft and encompassing as the glowing guitar amps. If this is a summation of the first three records' experiments, so be it; IV is as cohesive and complete for Faust as Led Zeppelin's fourth record is to them. Why we don't have posters of this hanging in university dorms instead is a true shame. And this is it, really - the end of Faust proper. I know there's the Munich and Elsewhere record and the Tony Conrad collab and then the 90s and beyond, but this was the end of Faust in the 70s; four perfect albums and then they disappeared. As much as I love Rien and some of the later stuff, you can't help but wonder what the legacy would be if they had stayed defunct. There's always been something occult about Faust, even if they were actually more like absurd art-school kids in person (as I suspect); the word 'occult' does come from 'occluded' so maybe that's how it should have stayed.