TDIH: Guided By Voices' "Alien Lanes" Released 30 Years Ago

Thirty years ago, today, April 4th, 1995, Guided By Voices' album "Alien Lanes" was released. Canonically, it was the third or fourth (depending on who is counting) release by what is affectionately known as the 'Classic Lineup'. The others are the legendary "Propeller" (1992), 1993's "Vampire on Titus" and the 1994 masterpiece, "Bee Thousand".

Guided By Voices (heretofore referred to as GBV) has had a rotating lineup since their beginning in 1984 in Dayton, Ohio of the same group: Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout and Mitch Mitchell. Different bass players would come in and out of view. Greg Demos was one, and during the period of "Alien Lanes" release, Spin Magazine writer Jim Greer assumed those duties in Demos' absence. Drummer Kevin Fennell, Pollard's real life brother-in-law at the time, rounded out the group. Greer later wrote the book about Guided by Voices.

It's really hard to crystalize what the world of music looked like in 1995 unless you were there. I was 19 years old, working in a record store. My first exposure to GBV came the previous year on MTV's program "120 Minutes". At the time, that was the place to go for exposure to avant-garde and underground music acts. Even our niche interests had to be curated by someone. These were, after all, the waning days of public life without the World Wide Web.

"Alien Lanes" picked up where "Bee Thousand" left off. And frankly, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. At the time, GBV recorded all of their music on 4-track equipment with a strict lo-fi ethos. "Alien Lanes" was also their first record made for a proper label, the indie titan Matador Records. Previous to this, all GBV music had been self-released or put out by Scat Records, in Cleveland.

What set this band apart from the others though was, quite simply, the songs. Pollard's prolific ability to churn out song after song is pretty much unmatched. Whereas most bands edit, at the time, GBV seemingly put out everything they recorded. Their sound was familiar (British Invasion, Proto-Punk and some Prog Rock), yet foreign. These are songs that sound like they have always existed, but they didn't. That's the best I can describe it.

They followed up "Alien Lanes" with 1996's "Under the Bushes Under the Stars"; their first attempt at a "non-lo-fi" sound. However, some of the music released on UTBUTS was indeed recorded on a 4-track. "Under the Bushes Under the Stars" was recorded in various locations: in Memphis at Easley Studios, in Dayton (where most GBV music had been recorded up to this point) and in Chicago with the late Steve Albini. It sounds like a record that was made in multiple places, almost like their "Exile on Main Street", but I think it works quite well.

This is where the complicated history of GBV gets a little more complicated. This version of GBV wouldn't make music together again until 2010 (more on that in a moment). In 1997, the original 'lineup' (if you can call it that) went their separate ways. Pollard reportedly released guitarist Mitch Mitchell. Tobin Sprout, the equally talented if less prolific songwriter and guitarist left. As did drummer Kevin Fennell. Pollard hired the Cleveland band Cobra Verde to round out his newly revised GBV iteration. The difference in sound was immediately apparent.

The version of the band from 1997-2004 was a much more polished if slightly harder-edged version of the lo-fi darlings that had seemingly dropped out of the Dayton, Ohio air in 1994 with the exposure that followed "Bee Thousand". Mind you, I like some of those records very much, particularly "Earthquake Glue". It's easily the tightest and most fully formed of that incarnation of the band.

After 2004, GBV ceased to exist for several years. Until, in 2010, they reformed with the more 'OG' lineup of Pollard, Sprout, Mitchell, Demos and Fennell (the 'Classic Lineup'). That iteration would go on to record 6 albums in four years. Seemingly picking up where they left off in 1996, in my opinion. Then, unceremoniously, that lineup of the band ended in late 2014. Coincidentally, they had an upcoming show in Columbus which would have been my very first GBV concert. I still had the printed ticket somewhere, but lost it. That show never happened.

Ever since 2016, the GBV that has been making music is an amalgam of that 1997-2004 lineup and some newcomers. The one constant through all the years is, of course, Robert Pollard; the eclectic wizard of indie rock who is as quintessentially a renaissance man as there ever has been; after all, he threw a no-hitter while pitching for the Wright State baseball team in 1978. And he's written (literally) thousands of songs. He's Dayton, Ohio's own. GBV is Dayton, Ohio's own. I don't think a band like GBV could have been fertilized anywhere else but the Midwest. Their music, Pollard's music, is as untouched by coastal cynicism as his pitching was the day of his no-hitter.

The club is open.

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