Review: Guided by Voices' 'Live from Austin, TX'

Although I'd seen Guided by Voices live a number of times, and knew their routine pretty well, I was still shocked to see their performance on the concert series Austin City Limits in 2005. Well-known for lubricating his performances with buckets of Rolling Rock, Robert Pollard held nothing back for his public television debut. His slurring and capering and hilariously inebriated rants were not the kinds of things you usually saw on PBS. 

But it wouldn't have been a GBV show without the beer, and since Pollard had already announced his band's eminent breakup during a show at NYC's Bowery Ballroom (I was there!), he must have realized that he had nothing to lose. Or maybe he just had a serious drinking problem.

In any event, the Austin City Limits performance offered as much unpredictability, energy, sloppiness, and charm as any Guided by Voices performance. Hearing the full performance on New West Records' Live from Austin, TX, nearly twenty years later, I'm actually surprised that it holds up so wonderfully as a listening experience. The band's line up in 2004, when the performance was recorded, was not their most celebrated, but it was certainly one of their most professional. Not indulging nearly as much as their frontman, stalwart guitarist Doug Gillard and drummer Kevin March held everything together even as Pollard has increasing trouble enunciating and bassist Chris Slusarenko and rhythm guitarist Nate Farley start sliding off course a bit. The setlist was terrific, favoring their latest (Half Smiles of the Decomposed) and most beloved (Bee Thousand) albums but sprinkling in choice selections from most of their dozen other LPs, as well as delicious obscurities like "Dayton Ohio-19 Something and 5", "Do the Earth", and the glorious "My Impression Now". By the time Pollard introduces Gillard as "Duh Gillar" before launching into an epic rendition of "Secret Star", you know he's more than three sheets to the wind, but he's still able to hit most of those high notes in "Pendulum", carry the melody of "Tractor Rape Chain", pull off the melismas of "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows", and remember most of the words to "Fair Touching". In his own sloshy way, Bob was a pro too. 

What's less surprising is how much the fun of seeing the band live during those days floods back when listening to Live from Austin, TX today. It's also valuable as the only official live GBV album on vinyl (I would sell my old ticket stubs to get a reissue of the Live from the Wheelchair Races compilation on vinyl). Originally released on black vinyl in 2017, Live from Austin, TX is about to get a special Record Store Day release on red splatter vinyl. However, the review copy I received is the previously issued black vinyl, which sounds really good on flat, well-centered vinyl. My copy was a bit crackly from inner-sleeve residue, but that washes away. 

Review: Reissues of Robert Pollard's 'Kid Marine' and 'Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department'

As the twentieth century transitioned into the twenty-first, Robert Pollard was in a similar state of transition. In 1998 and 1999, he made his first hi-fi Guided by Voices albums, each with new line ups, each for different labels, and each with different critical consensuses (Mag Earwhig!: yay! Do the Collapse: nay!).

Bob’s all-new solo career was similarly unstable. He began it in 1996 with the promisingly haphazard Not in My Airforce, which he followed with the tight, almost uniformly terrific Waved Out in 1998. However, the possibility that solo Pollard might continue to progress fell apart with that same year’s Kid Marine. The music was not bad—a new backing band that would help him make the villainously underrated Do the Collapse provide polished performances— but the songs don’t display Pollard’s usual golden ear. The lack of structure can be expected from the guy who created all those fantastic fragments on Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. The lack of hooks is much less forgivable. There are some pretty good songs, such as “Far Out Crops” and “White Gloves Come Off”, but there’s nothing in the realm of the previous albums’ “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out” or “Subspace Biographies” to anchor it. “Town of Mirrors” boasts a big shout-along chorus perfect for band/audience communion in concert, but that chorus isn’t very catchy and the rest of the track barely qualifies as a song.

Then the instability continued as Pollard finished out the century by collaborating with GBV’s newest MVP wingman, Doug Gillard. Multi-instrumentalist Gillard recorded the instrumental tracks for Pollard’s songs solo before passing the tapes back to the writer, who fastened his own weird words, melodies, and voice to them. The results are probably Bob’s best non-GBV work. Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department uncaps a flood of fabulous songs, many of which would become live GBV staples. Those thirsting for the hooks absent from Kid Marine had their needs well quenched with stuff like “Frequent Weaver who Burns”, “Pop Zeus”, “Do Something Real”, “Tight Globes”, “Messiahs”, and the rest of a bloody beautiful disc that ranks majestically alongside GBV’s early twentieth century work.

Both Kid Marine and Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department were available in limited vinyl editions twenty years ago, but those are hard to come by today. So GBV Inc. is reissuing both in newly remastered editions on vinyl, as well as in FLAC and MP3 formats. I only had access to the digital files, both of which are brick walled to the extreme.

Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Guided by Voices Songs!

Thirty years ago, Robert Pollard’s Guided by Voices released their first album. This year, Pollard released his—brace yourself—100^th album. Let that sink in for a second. That’s quite a discography for a schoolteacher from Dayton. Pollard recorded those 100 albums with and without GBV, but today, we’re just going to focus on his biggest claim to cult fame, because even I could not keep up with every single release by Go Back Snowball, Lifeguards, Boston Spaceships, Circus Devils, and whatever other Pollard side projects have slipped through my grasp. Hell, I can’t even keep up with Guided by Voices anymore, so you may notice that this list only extends to the end of Guided by Voices’ first official run in 2004. Plus, anything later than that violates Psychobabble’s unbreakable retro code. As you will see, there was still plenty to choose from amongst the countless albums, EPs, singles, and compilations released during their first two decades. As you will also see, I am no GBV snob. I love the fan-fave lo-fi stuff as much as I love the fan-loathed hi-fi stuff, so maybe you should brace yourself for that too. So here goes Psychobabble’s very personal and subjective 100 Favorite Guided by Voices Songs!

100. “Land of Danger” (from Forever Since Breakfast)

We begin our blatant doom trip with an appropriate number since “Land of Danger” is the very first track on Guided by Voice’s very first release. Or is it appropriate? After all, these masters of mixing their multitudinous influences are really just aping R.E.M. on “Land of Danger”. Don’t mistake that for bad news, though, because R.E.M. is awesome and Guided by Voices supply one of the catchiest, most powerful R.E.M. songs that R.E.M. never got to supply themselves.

99. “Perhaps We Were Swinging” (from Hardcore UFOs)