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Alien Lanes

Guided By Voices

Jesus, what a glorious mess this disk is. Side by side with some of the most ridiculous crap I’ve ever heard in my life are some of the most interesting and creative melodies I’ve heard in some time. Either these guys are completely incapable of editing themselves, or they simply don’t care to.

"Alien Lanes" makes it very obvious that the members of GBV, particularly head honcho Robert Pollard, does not discriminate among his various creations. That means that discerning listeners must do the job for themselves, but in my opinion, it’s ultimately worth the trouble. For every ridiculous waste of my time like "Big Chief Chinese Restaurant" or "Ex-Supermodel", which features somebody making loud snoring noises throughout the track, there are that many more snippets of inspiring genius. "Game of Pricks," "My Valuable Hunting Knife" and "Motor Away" each deserve to be featured on your local ‘hit’ radio station, or better yet, cleaned up and covered by a famous band that could only wish to write something so clever and catchy. Since Pink Floyd are incapable of generating fresh new material, why not cover "Always Crush Me"?

"Alien Lanes" actually shows the band trying a bit harder than usual to retain some semblance of sonic clarity, even stretching out to sparingly include some slide guitar and violin. Look, the CD has twenty-eight tracks on it. 28!!! Yes, a good percentage of them can be dismissed, but even if half of them are extraneous, that still leaves fourteen that are thoroughly worthwhile. I wish that they would spend a bit more effort focusing on what makes their best stuff so good and eliminate the chaff, but then again, maybe sorting through their output is half of the fun.
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