Guided by Voices
Earwhig is British slang for that blabbermouth at the end of the bar who fancies himself the world’s greatest storyteller. There’s a metaphor here for Guided by Voices’ way-beyond-prolific leader, Robert Pollard. Sure, he labored admirably over his four-track down in that now-famous Dayton, Ohio, basement for ten years as the world passed him by, but ever since the indie-rock universe started kissing his ass, circa 1993’s Vampire on Titus, he’s had songwriting diarrhea of the worst sort.
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Pollard has foisted 99 tunes on us over four official albums since 1993–not including the 21 new numbers on Mag Earwhig!, or his solo disc, or the between-album EPs, or the ’95 box set compiling the prefame basement tapes. The law of averages alone dictates that a fair amount of that has to be crap, or at least redundant. (“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before,” says the earwhig.)
These tunes would have made a heck of an EP–great to crank up and sing along with in the car, but certainly not original or important enough to warrant much further attention. As it is, you have to wade through 15 unremarkable-to-downright-awful tracks in order to get to them, and I just don’t know if that’s worth $15.99 and 45 minutes and 40 seconds of your time. I never bought into that Deadhead argument that “every third show is brilliant.” If it means you have to sit through two shitty ones to get there, forget it. And hey, tell that guy at the end of the bar to pipe down.
