Guided By Voices 4: Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

Robert Pollard kept Guided By Voices alive as a studio band, releasing albums himself once he finalized a lineup and artwork. What we now call a lo-fi approach makes Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia closest yet to the trademark GBV sound. And at 37 minutes, it was their longest album yet.

“The Future Is In Eggs” follows the usual Pollard method of having a droning root note while a guitar moves around on top of it. The reverberating drums are a nice touch, and his words are nearly unintelligible. “The Great Blake Street Canoe Race” has a familiar jangle and another crazy title, culminating in a guitar solo—a prototype of “Echos Myron”, if you will. Unfortunately things start to go sideways on “Slopes Of Big Ugly”, which sounds like it was cobbled together a note at a time for some sludgy noise. Thirty seconds of garage-style chords and drums switch abruptly to the lovely acoustic “Paper Girl”, with nice self-harmonies. The insistent riff of “Navigating Flood Regions” interrupts that, and soon develops into a cool rocker. “An Earful O’Wax” is in the same key, so he’s starting to repeat himself, but when it finds other chords for the chorus, it comes to life, and even changes tempo, showing his prog roots. It seems longer than its four minutes. “White Whale” seems like more of the same one-chord pounding, but again, there are clever changes in the choruses; if only we could discern the words.

“Trampoline” is another variation on the droning root formula with murky vocals, bested by the arpeggiated picking and catchy choruses on “Short On Posters”. The fade on the end sets up the hard metal approach to “Chief Barrel Berry”, wherein Pollard imagines he’s fronting a bunch of long-haired players on a stage with shooting flames and flashing lights. The only lyric we can get is “they say love is the one thing we needed in this world to be happy”, which is repeated, likely to pumping fists and much headbanging. Then on “Dying To Try This” he’s back to singing by himself over a barely tuned acoustic; “cigarette in one hand and a beer in the other” means it’s autobiographical. But it’s just an interlude as “The Qualifying Remainder” brings back the crunch, over a robotic drum beat that challenges whoever’s being forced to play it. (We’re assuming that’s Kevin Fennell, as he gets co-writing credit.) It’s mostly noise, until Pollard finds that one melody line towards the end that keeps it from getting too monotonous. The see-saw goes back for “Liar’s Tale”, with its tremolo guitar and solo reverbed vocal. This could be a power pop song if it only had a rhythm section; instead we get just a couple of snare hits during the brief guitar solo. Somehow “Radio Show (Trust The Wizard)” brings the best parts of the record together—chords, vocals, harmonies, tempo shifts, even backwards effects. It even has a coda that seems unrelated to anything else.

While they were still using professional-level techniques, the homemade approach on Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia kept costs down, so it sounds like songs from all over, as opposed to a unified whole. And it works, most of the time.

Guided By Voices Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia (1989)—3

Guided By Voices 3: Sandbox

Clearly determined to keep making records even if nobody bought them, Guided By Voices released their second album in the space of a calendar year. Another dozen songs totaling less than a half-hour, Sandbox was recorded with the established rhythm section of Mitch Mitchell (not that one) and Kevin Fennell, with Robert Pollard’s brother Jim and their coproducer adding some guitar.

“Lips Of Steel” and “A Visit To The Creep Doctor” might as well be two halves of the same song, with solid power chords and partially buried vocals. “Everyday” still has some R.E.M. jangle, but with mildly out-of-tune guitars; while the message is muddled, he knew it needed a hook for a chorus. While all one performance with no editing, “Barricade” is alternated between fast and slow sections, one of which culminates in a repeated quote from the Beatles’ “Little Child”. “Get To Know The Ropes” is a martial dirge with self-harmonies and a repeat of the “ladies and gentlemen” introduction already heard on “Lips Of Steel”. There’s even a fake fade.

He learned to kick off sides with a rocker, and “Can’t Stop” is that, with dynamic shifts; it’s almost a love song. He gets mildly political on “The Drinking Jim Crow”, but you have to listen really closely to hear him call America “a nasty little nation”. “Trap Soul Door” is very interesting, as it’s so brief, but has his hallmark of a simple soloing guitar over droning bass lines. “Common Rebels” begins with alternating guitars in each speaker, but improves when it turns into a Who pastiche. “Long Distance Man” is a solo acoustic one with layered harmonies; straightforward but over quick, whereas “I Certainly Hope Not” straddles a jerky verse with a more power-pop chorus. While “Adverse Wind” has some melodic moments, it’s still a little jumbled and clattery.

Being recorded in an eight-track garage studio, Sandbox doesn’t have the lo-fi experimentation that would one day define the band, but Pollard is still experimenting with the form. He also hasn’t quite developed his voice—yet. It’s harmless, with no real clunkers, if not very memorable.

Guided By Voices Sandbox (1987)—3

Guided By Voices 2: Devil Between My Toes

A big deal is made in the Guided By Voices narrative about Devil Between My Toes being their first full-length album, but at just over half an hour it’s a mere eight minutes longer than their EP. Still, Robert Pollard had already decided he’d concentrate on being more of a recording band than a performing band, and also took the bold step of including recordings in a “professional” studio alongside tapes compiled in his basement.

The R.E.M. jangle is still in place on “Old Battery”, with its punning chorus of “die hard”, and also “Discussing Wallace Chambers”, which may not have been inspired by the football player but still provides a springboard for a lyrical journey. “Cyclops” is another signpost, as it begins with an arpeggiated guitar part over open strings, something of a GBV trademark. A primitive drum machine drives “Crux”, which eventually includes some dueling riffs but no vocals, an idea in search of a song. “A Portrait Destroyed By Fire” is the anomaly here, as it runs over five minutes. A dark proto-metal dirge with buried vocals before the verses kick in, it’s mostly notable for being the first appearance of one Tobin Sprout, who would become a valuable collaborator and creative foil, to say the least. The side closes with “3 Year Old Man”, a simple exercise for tremolo guitar.

“Dog’s Out” is a more blatant attempt to write something catchy and singalongable, and for that it succeeds, but “A Proud And Booming Industry”, for all its potential as a classic Pollard song title, is more riff-noodling. “Hank’s Little Fingers” wants to be a pop song, and it’s kinda cute in that way. The song has distinct choruses, nicely melded at the end, but again it’s followed by an indulgent guitar instrumental in “Artboat”. And it’s back to the straight college rock of “Hey Hey Spaceman”, complete with happy cries of “let’s go” somehow rising above a dense, muddied mix. “The Tumblers” stands out for its almost tribal rhythm instead of the usual four-on-the-floor beat, though the lyrics are again, buried. “Bread Alone” is yet another instrumental, but this time it’s two acoustic guitars. But for some kind of horn blast grafted onto the beginning, “Captain’s Dead” has the hallmarks of a GBV classic, with crazy tempo, furious strumming, melody, and harmonies. It truly points the way for them.

Devil Between My Toes wouldn’t get wider exposure until it was repackaged in the Box box, but which time the band (or least Pollard) had become iconic. It remains of interest only to completists, and a reminder than they were just one of thousands of bands making records in their home towns across the country.

Guided By Voices Devil Between My Toes (1987)—2½

Guided By Voices 1: Forever Since Breakfast

Robert Pollard was just your ordinary small town all-star athlete who got a job teaching fourth-grade math and science after college, but never lost his dream to be in a band. With a rotating lineup of local Dayton, Ohio friends, he settled on the moniker Guided By Voices, and tried playing the bar scene, but soon restricted their activities to recording the piles of song ideas he’d been accumulating. Unlike much of their future output, Forever Since Breakfast was recorded in an actual studio, and GBV pressed up copies of their debut EP themselves.

The chiming guitars that open “Land Of Danger” can’t help but bring R.E.M. to mind, and with Pollard’s voice often buried in the reverb-heavy mix, the comparison is even more unavoidable. “Let’s Ride” is in the same vein, but the vocals are more pronounced, and some of the hallmarks of his chording style, as well as melodic lead guitar, are in place. It’s even more striking to hear the lo-fi sound quality of “Like I Do”, with its simple acoustic strum and faraway vocal over what sounds like a TV or radio broadcast. “Sometimes I Cry” powers back with a more standard rock sound, continued on “She Wants To Know”, but it’s still hard to figure out the lyrics. The power chords on “Fountain Of Youth” are more Townshend than Page, and there’s something of a prog touch on the passages between verses. “The Other Place” brings all the influences together—except maybe prog—and more buried lyrics for a strong finish.

Once the band became more widely known, Forever Since Breakfast was very hard to find, but got wider distribution after it was included in 2003’s Hardcore UFOs box set, and another twenty years went by before it was made available for streaming. At 23 minutes, it’s no more nor less substantial than their other EPs, but at least it’s more accessible (in all senses of the word) these days. It remains a curio in their sprawling catalog, yet hardly an embarrassment.

Guided By Voices Forever Since Breakfast (1986)—3