Matador Records
1995
Alien Lanes
About This Album
It's surprising what a difference it makes when a musician knows someone will actually be hearing his work. After 1994's charmingly sloppy Bee Thousand gained Guided By Voices a nationwide cult following (instead of the local cult following they were accustomed to), 1995's Alien Lanes found Robert Pollard and his partners in hard pop cleaning up their act a bit. For the most part, Alien Lanes isn't radically different from Bee Thousand -- it was primarily recorded on a four-track cassette machine (and sounds like it), and Guided By Voices was still a garage band with more in the way of inspiration than chops. But the musicians have put a bit more care and focus into their performance on this set; the playing is tighter and sharper, and the band plays toward their strengths, pushing their occasional sloppiness into a harder, more rock-oriented direction. And if Pollard and Tobin Sprout were still obsessed with tiny fragments of pop song wonderment, they also rounded up a more consistent collection of them; there aren't quite as many obvious masterpieces as on Bee Thousand, but also fewer obvious mistakes, and the sequencing gives the album a more consistent flow than before.
Track List (try tracks 3,5,14,15,17 and 24)

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