Jan. 26, 2011 - Issue #797 : Ann Vriend
Old Sounds
Guided By Voices
Bee Thousand (Scat) Originally released: 1994
Having reportedly recorded the entire album in three days, the majority of the songs taking a half an hour to record, the spontaneity and band chemistry manage to sprout a fully genuine recording not unlike a live show. The majority of the songs that appear on Bee Thousand are rehashed from the band's a decade-long past.
In one sense, Guided By Voices is pop genius, crafting song after song without breaching the three-minute mark, never conceding to anything less than ear-worm standards. In another sense, there isn't a single song on Bee Thousand that doesn't sound like something heard before. Recorded at home, the lo-fi esthetic the group tapped into was very much its own before it was the recognized or romanticized convention it is today. It's that same low fidelity that transforms these otherwise familiar songs into something new and unique to GBV.
Unfortunately, though 20 tracks deep, these songs don't last forever. After too many listens the tracks tend to get burned out and lose their charm, which is too bad since most every song is so terribly catchy. The brevity is as brilliant as it is frustrating: because of the amateur engineering, many of the songs end as abruptly as pressing stop on your tape dubber, forcing you to go back again and again. GBV never allows a punctuating coda to let us feel as though the song is finished. The belligerent, blaring ballads rattle around in your brain long after you first hear them. Whether or not this was the band's intention, it's certainly effective.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Bee Thousand is the prophetic place this record occupies in history: the professional recording conventions Guided By Voices so bravely jettisoned were further reflected in the grassroots success of the record. Without spending very much on traditional promotion, Bee Thousand became a word-of-mouth sensation without a Facebook or Twitter to help.
In these two distinct ways, Bee Thousand was an early indication of the approaches indie rock became characterized by, as well as a harbinger for the distinct variety of viral success that now carries plenty of musicians' careers to fruition in our share-button age of communication. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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