As the Live-Aid generation turned rock into yet another Coke-sponsored fast food consumer experience, young bands like Pussy Galore turned to the primitive playing of primal riffs of blues and early rock'n'roll to scare their audiences, and the demonization of dozens of DefJam twelve inches testify to the shock value to the Woodstock generation of simply scratching a record, PE's music terrorizing as many people as their radical poetry.

Indeed, albums like Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me exploited the shortcomings of their equipment to sonic effect, as songs collapsed into bleeding-amp cacophony in sympathy with Mascis's mournful lyrics. While perhaps the least satisfying track on that album, Lou Barlow's home-recorded psyche-folk epic, "Poledo", is a turning point track for the American underground. Recorded on a portable four track, Barlow soaked and baked and gleefully fucked over the tapes, a la The Beatles' "Revolution No.9", before chaotically mixing them down onto the record. Soon leaving the band to form his own Sebadoh (and all its offshoots), Barlow had just created Lo-Fi.

Although bands had been recording at home for many years, Barlow and his Sebadoh, and even more obviously his side-project Sentridoh, soon became the most infamous of the Lo-Fi groups, while he was portrayed as some sad rejected loser sitting at home recording hundreds of songs a night on his beloved four track. While Barlow and a whole slew of folky singer-songwriter types dominated the market in home-recorded material, this cheap recording format also lent itself to bands who were just toodamned kooky to ever be recorded by a major label, who recorded quirky and experimental seven-inches on shoestring budgets and occasionally hit paydirt, famously Pavement, who called one such e.p. "Perfect Sound Forever" to mock the claims of CD manufacturers. Not only was this explosion democratising the recording industry, empowering everybody to record and release music, it also saw bands discovering that the studio was in fact a vital element in their sound; where the 80s had studios boasting that their technology could make perfect, hiss free recordings (and much money was made selling people remastered versions of albums they had already bought, sometimes three times over, perhaps the most pernicious form of forced commercial nostalgia), the children of the 60s and 70s, perhaps the first generation to be truly brought up on worn pop records and pop culture, discovered that this scratchiness, this tape noise, was indeed essential to the atmosphere of their music. A Tribe Called Quest mastered the fact that a sampled, scratched Blue Note record gave them a far classier, more authentically soulful sound than the digital, synth-etic, session musician tapestries of Whitney Houston, and stumbled on a kind of unconscious post-modern pop language. Their every skilfully deployed sample resonated with history and meaning, spoke to a generation brought up on a vast array of musics in their family's record cabinets, and created an ambience that Q-Tip and Phiphe could rap over and embellish. Public Enemy's Fear... LP saw them cut up right-wingers' radio discussions about them amongst prime Temptations and Family Stone samples, creating a bewildering yet potent and politicised stew of black culture and white oppression for Chuck and Flav to work with. Up to the present day, Mo'Wax and artists like DJ Shadow and Portishead deal in music which communicates an atmosphere and feeling not only through notes and voices, but also through the history and culture scratched and manipulated jazz and funk communicate to a generation aware of a wide variety of musics. Such recordings play heavily on the existence of pop music as a physical artefact, as sound contained on a fragile circle of plastic/shellac, rather than as played on instruments in person, taken to an almost absurd length on Beck's "Minus", which pauses mid-song for a sample of someone simply laying needle to plastic, without us hearing any of the music contained on it. Trip-Hop bases its effect entirely around the mystique and sophistication jazz is given over pop and rock; it only samples historically correct jazz, (understandably) David Sanborn and Kenny G samples do not litter such releases. Also, it is interesting to note that Money Mark's affectionate pastiches of cheesy 70s funk and soul ephemera are (justifiably) greeted with more respect and cool kudos than Jamiroqui's creepy white-bread appropriation of Stevie Wonder's Soul/Funk idiom, spot-on though it admittedly is. Again, warm, home recorded analogue music wins over the digitally produced product, seeming more honest and convincing.

This is where Guided By Voices come in. As much a part of their appeal as their wonderful, winning songs is the legend that accompanies them, of eccentric supply teachers who bash out authentic beat-psych alt-folk albums in their garage. In an interview with NME this year, the band revealed that they didn't play live until they had recorded at least five albums' worth of material, their local Dayton, Ohio stages ironically clogged up with cover bands. As a result, the band existed simply in peoples' rooms, as Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout recorded their songs wherever they could find a decent (or half-decent) (or not-very-decent-at-all) tape recorder. Along with the classic hooklines and choruses and classic set-up of guitar-bass-drums is a very classic, warm, crackly sound quality that, as Melody Maker's review of the Alien Lanes LP asserted, gives them the feeling of forgotten pop nuggets on vinyl records that have been gathering dust in a loft since the 1960s. Again this is similar to hip-hop's love of authentic, scratched vinyl samples (the Beasties still boast of "Hitting the wax/I'm not using the CD"), although the financial situation of the band in their early days means that this quality to their recordings may have been just a lucky circumstance of not being able to afford proper studio time.

Which makes it surprising that the sound on the first CD of Scat records' Guided By Voices Box Set, Devil Between My Toes (1987), is so clear and well defined compared to that of, say, their Matador records debut, Bee Thousand. Indeed, the whole CD is quite a surprise, being for the most part reminiscent of the sharp, chiming folk-rock of REM's "Murmur" LP, with Robert Pollard's voice a dead-ringer for Stipe's vulnerable burr, Southern twang intact (in a recent interview with NME, he admitted that he soon consciously adopted a British singing accent to avoid Stipe comparisons). This is the only CD in the set which really needs a programmable CD, as the great fully formed songs are interspersed with pointless rehearsal room experimentations, but for the most part, it is engaging enough, if a little pale. Only "Hank's Little Fingers", the slightly cloying "Hey Hey Spaceman", and the solidly power-pop "Captain's Dead" (imagine the Byrds jamming with the Ramones, a more angelic Husker Du) really set the goose-pimples rising in classic GBV fashion. Sandbox (1987) is a vast improvement, possibly the most immediately accessible volume in the collection and their most obviously Beatle-esque, with its pastische of "Sgt Pepper's"'s band-within-an-album concept, and the Lennon/McCartney harmonies of "Long Distance Man", which in turn steals its refrain from The Mamas and The Papas' "Monday Monday". A collection of subtly engaging jangle-rockers so infectious you'll be singing along from the second chorus, paean to the escapist joys of the rock star life "Everyday" and the distinctly Ringo-esque "I Certainly Hope Not" are stand-outs, whilst excursions into jagged alt-rock ("Common Rebels")remain as fun to listen to as they probably were to record.

While 1989's Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia takes a few more listens to get into, it contains some of the band's best songs. "Paper Girl" is a gorgeous song with stunning three-part harmonies, while "An Earful O' Wax" is their first epic, mixing heart-stopping dynamics with a deliciously writhing melody-line and an emotionally charged guitar solo that powers the song to its climax. It is redolent of (and its is just as hard to admit to knowledge of this band as it is to compare GBV to such cred albatrosses) pre-Phil Collins Genesis; thankfully stripped of their synth driven pomp excess, GBV (who admit Genesis' Lamb Lies Down On Broadway LP as an influence) retain their playful way with words and melodies and their ability to switch from sweetly folky pop to weirdo song structures. "Liar's Tale", with its sparse tremolo guitar and voice orchestration, is pretty and affecting, while "Short On Posters" is a pulse-quickeningly jangly song, with a cool refrain. As usual, it is lyrically almost completely impenetrable; is the album's title a wry comment on the band's weird period sound?

1990's Same Place The Fly Got Smashed is almost self-destructively bitty, duelling frothy indie beat-pop like "The Hard Way" and "Pendulum" with tracks like "Club Molluska", 1950s rock'n'roll balladery on downers. Opened by two clangers with absolutely no redemptive qualities, "Airshow '88" and "Slave Trade", this mountainous range of highs and lows also takes in gems like acoustic ditties "When She Turns 50" (Pollard's poem from father to daughter?), and "How Loft I Am?". "Drinker's Peace", however, is a revelation, an absolute jaw-dropper with Pollard swapping surreal sweetness for affecting self-loathing in his graphic depiction of the dependant relationship between an alcoholic and his booze. Its a frightening, intensely real song, pulling no punches, an uncomfortable ride through another's neuroses, akin to Husker Du's "Too Far Down", and it shows that Pollard can move lyrically, as well as melodically.

The last disc in the set is King Shit And The Golden Boys, a collection of unreleased tracks from 1988-1993. The big surprise is that nearly all of the material equals or surpasses the rest of the songs in the box, confirming Pollard as some pop wizard, writing billions of magic songs in the time it takes the rest of us to even turn on our word-processors. "Fantasy Creeps" and "Sopor Joe" both turn up as segments in the later track "Saturn X" on Propellor, and are both lazy, natural psychedelic rock turns. Much of the album features GBV's trademark guitar pop, with its simple, child-like melodies. It is also the first album to feature the songs of guitarist Tobin Sprout, whose "Scissors" is a nonsensical but nevertheless touching piece of amps-up pop. The acoustic version of "Don't Stop Now" lacks the grandeur of the electric version on Under the Bushes..., but "Crocker's Favorite Song" more than compensates, swathes of acoustic guitar caressing Pollard's electronically altered vocal, with a surging tune akin to Oasis' best.

And so to Propellor (1991), which together with Vampire On Titus (1993) was the album that brought the band a much wider audience. Both albums were collected on one CD, which opened with "Wished I Was A Giant", a fine song combining primitive Velvets backing with Pollard's rasping, wistful vocals. Clocking in at 67 minutes long, this CD is dauntintg in length, but lurking amongst a fair amount of throwaway filler are tracks like the cascading "Dusted", the psychedelic "Perhaps Now The Vultures", Sprout's wan "Wondering Boy Poet", the youthful punk rock of "Quality Of Armor" ("Oh yeah I'm gonna drive my car!"), the pounding quasi-dirge-metal of "Some Drilling Implied", and the exploding firework of indie-folk that is "On The Tundra". Stand out track, however, and possibly the band's best song, is the epic "Over The Neptune/Mesh Gear Fox". A rabid crowd calling out "GBV! GBV!" dives into a sneery mid paced punk thrash, which hits a Genesis-y psyche folk impasse, before dissolving into a guitar solo-drenched anthemic climax. Sometimes difficult to listen to, and smeared with the studio noise that waould later become their trademark, you should still make his your second GBV purchase, after Under The Bushes.... Bee Thousand, 1994, is too flip by half, with tracks in search of a tune passing tunes in search of a decent tape recorder. Robert Pollard's wayward muse seems to have left the building on this own goal by the band; "I Am A Scientist" and "Gold Star For Robot Boy" both cry out for a decent re-recording or remix, both being stand-outs in the GBV live set. "I Am A Scientist" was indeed revived for single release about this time, in a much more satisfying guise, but the inessentiality of the B-sides makes it a costly purchase for just one song. Also released around this time was "The Ground Hour", an EP of the Breeders-covered classic "Shocker In Gloomtown" and five other tracks of little merit; this too is an expensive buy for just one song.

Alien Lanes (1995) is a far more satisfying mix of perfect pop and imperfect recording techniques. Tarnished slivers of rock gold like "Cigarette Tricks" and Ex-Supermodel" only serve to compliment "Proper" songs like "Striped White Jets"' feedback drenched drama and "Chicken Blows"' ELO-on-a-very-tight-budget-indeed. The effect is of a hallucinogenic spin across the airwaves of an alternate 60s AM radio. Some of the tracks were dusted off and re-recorded for singles on Matador, versions which mostly lost a lot of the charm of the scratched up originals, although "As We Go Up We Go Down" could have done with this treatment, as the LP version is a genius slice of gentle jangle cut off in its prime after just one chorus. Also, seek out the "Motor Away" single, if only for the maudlin Who-esque rock out B-side "Color Of My Blade".

Which rings us to the present day, and Under The Bushes, Under The Stars, slobbered over elsewhere in this magazine. One listen to the way Pollard's voice and Sprout's guitar reverberate on warm wax like a shimmering summer day's heat haze will be enough for you to reject Perfect Sound Forver. One dip in "Underwater Explosions"' Beach Boys/Beatles hybrid will be enough to convince you that those pesky yanks can do even Britpop better. Better still catch them live in concert, probably during the next school vacations, and taste the most joyous show on Earth, a celebration of the power of guitars, choruses, and melody that doesn't need a video-wall to recall the Beatles.

Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout have both just released solo albums. I'm off to get them now; I should imagine they'll have written another album's worth of songs by the time I get back!

Most of Guided By Voices' back catalogue (including the EPs) can still be ordered by your friendly neighbourhood record store, on either Matador or Scat Records. Pollard and Sprout's solo albums will be reviewed next issue.

from ReSISTOR #1.

e-mail me at stevie.chick@btinternet.com