10 years on still listening to alien lanes

... its been 10 years since "alien lanes" by guided by voices was released...hard to believe....

just purchased the LP (i have copies of the cd of course).. a few interesting things of note.. apparently the way to tell if its the original 1995 pressing is if it does not have the bar code.. in addition, my copy has a label on the second side which erroneously lists "auditorium" and "motor away" as tracks 14 and 15...this is an error as they are tracks 14 and 15 on the a side.. in this case they are listed as tracks 14 and 15 on both the a and b side!.. weird.. someone was drinking too much while typing up the labels or something...i would assume this has been corrected on the repressings...the LP really lets you dig the cover art..its such a different feeling to look and hold the lp.... you can actually understand a bit more what the cover was aiming for.. and the picture on the back is HUGE compared to the cd.. the lyrics are easily readable in the gatefold.....the record as is typical of many matador lps has a minor warp..

so thats the technical info...

"alien lanes" is just a slam dunk record.... released in april of 1995 it was released a mere 10 months after "bee thousand" made them the critics darlings they remained for their entire career..this album cemented their legend... "alien lanes" is quite different from "bee thousand"..it packs a wallop of 28 tracks in about 40 minutes.. i can't think of any other album that does that with good songs..all original.....the album is GBV's pop-rock masterpiece... i think "bee thousand" is a little more acoustic/folky.... "alien lanes" rocks harder... gbv ringleader robert pollard, at the time this was recorded, had a ton of material he had been accumulating- much of which did not make it on to "bee thousand"... this all ended up on "alien lanes".. the push to break gbv with this album into the popular mainstream did not work but they gave it the college try.. videos got limited airplay on mtv... tobin sprout was in the band at this time and contributed some great songs...classics such as "little whirl"... the album has a ton of pop masterpieces..and to my mind shows a strong kinks/badfinger influence.... greg demos' bass work is tremendous on this and you can tell how much he meant to the recording of this album because although he does not get much songwriting credit the bass really leads a number of this songs.. the music for them is often times built around the bass... of course, its lo-fi but as someone pointed out once the lo-fi nature of the album works well because the lo-fi recalls the 60s sound being channeled..

the album is a real grower... you have to listen to it a few times to get into it...but once you do boy.. i love every song.. but particularly "a salty salute" their tribute to drinking.. "game of pricks".. "my valuable hunting knife".."striped white jets" and the kicking closer "alright" which is guided by voices at their heaviest...

i think some day this album will overtake "bee thousand" as GBV's definitive work..its a pity they could not sustain the quality on this, the follow up "under the bushes under the stars", and a few other projects from this time (pollard's first solo lp the wonderful "not in my airfoce", GBV's outtakes compilation "tonics and twisted chasers") longer...to me the GBV period 1993-1996 is really special...

1994-1995 seems now like the last gasp of rock'n'roll.. a lot of great stuff, for some reason, came out around then, not the least of it "alien lanes"..much of it on matador records (jon spencer "orange", liz phair "exile", pavement "crooked rain", yo la tengo "electropura", chavez, etc.) i saw their tour in support of this record, at the black cat (even chatted it up with their then "manager for life" pete jamison), and at the time their live performances were still a bit too ragged for my taste.. eventually they ended up becoming one of the better rock'n'roll live bands.. but in 1995 they were still learning how to create a rock'n'roll show around oftentimes quite lo-fi songs (often sketches or demos of songs)...