Most musicians pride their work and have the tendency to make the sound of their music as perfect as possible. Big arena rockers like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, etc. spend days in the recording studio perfecting and transforming their sounds into the songs you hear on their albums. Well, of course with everything in life, there are opposites of everything. Guided By Voices are one of the number one opposites of traditional music making. On their groundbreaking 1994 album, Bee Thousand, Guided By Voices simply brought out a four-track player and just took one take and keep whatever was recorded, weather someone made a mistake or not.
All previous albums by Guided By Voices had been recorded in a traditional studio making traditional indie music, but as I mentioned before, Bee Thousand was anything but a traditional indie album. It's as lo-fi as lo-fi can get. All recorded on a four-track player where mistakes were just okay to make on the recording. The earliest examples is how the guitar drops out on opening track "Hardcore UFOs", but then comes back in. GBV did something that was needed in music; to break the cliche of modernized perfect-sounding music and bring in a raw, in-the-moment feel to every song.
The success of Bee Thousand is quite ironic because it was intentionally going to be GBV's last album and they did whatever they wanted with it; and that was creating lo-fi pop songs that have melodies that can stick in your head for days. Taking inspiration from the British-invasion and fast paced short punk ages of music, Bee Thousand is one of the most exciting pop albums of the '90s.
From hearing that first song off of Bee Thousand, "Hardcore UFOs", you're immediately sucked into Robert Pollard British sounding voice and neat lo-fi sound that is produced from the recording of the four-track. Being a 20-song album, Bee Thousand has lots of twists and turns cutting off songs at bizarre spots. There is also a lot of softer spots as opposed to loud, fast-paced punk songs. There are stupidly good songs ("Kicker of Elves"), psychedelic treats ("The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory") and pure rockers ("Smothered In Hugs"). But, the most important thing that all of Bee Thousand's song have in common is that they are short and sweet.
The short and sweet setting that Bee Thousand is perfectly set up. You don't even get tired of one song because it always switches into something more fresh and entertaining, making Bee Thousand the ultimate pop album. I'm glad that GBV decided to stick together and just make one last very ugly record that just exploits their true sound; a beautiful mess of lo-fi pop songs.
Overall: 8.8/10
Track Listing:
1. Hardcore UFOs - 10.0
2. Buzzards and Dreadful Cows - 9.5
3. Tractor Rape Chain - 10.0
4. The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory - 9.5
5. Hot Freaks - 9.5
6. Smothered In Hugs - 9.5
7. Yours To Keep - 8.0
8. Echos Myron - 9.5
9. Gold Star For Robot Boy - 9.0
10. Awful Bliss - 9.0
11. Mincer Ray - 9.0
12. A Big Fan of Pigpen - 8.5
13. The Queen of Cans and Jars - 9.0
14. Her Psychology - 8.0
15. Kicker of Elves - 9.0
16. Ester's Day - 8.0
17. Demons Are Real - 7.5
18. I Am A Scientist - 9.0
19. Peep-Hole - 8.0
20. You're Not an Airplane - 9.0
Sample:
No comments:
Post a Comment