The Releases: Motivational Jumpsuit (LP—GBVi, 2014) / Save the Company (Single—GBVi, 2014) / Vote for Me Dummy (Single—GBVi, 2014) / Alex and the Omegas (Single—GBVi, 2014) / The Littlest League Possible (Single—GBVi, 2014) / Planet Score (Single—GBVi, 2014)
The cover for Guided by Voices’ 2014 album, Motivational Jumpsuit, features the image of a preteen staring at a poster-sized image of the band’s 1995 Tigerbomb EP. We can’t see their expression, but the arms drawn backwards suggest that this is more than an action shot—yes, I’m fully aware that this is not a photograph, but another in an endless line of Robert Pollard collages. Instead, the image seems to imply that we are witnessing an act of devotion, or at least quiet reverence.
Released at the absolute height of GBV’s power—following the world-beating one-two punch of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes—Tigerbomb‘s personnel remains something of a mystery, thirty years after the fact. First off, it’s Jimmy Pollard whose face graces its cover. While the younger Pollard brother was still very much around band activities during this era, his contributions to their actual recordings was always a subject of speculation. We know that Bob Pollard was obviously involved in Tigerbomb—that is him singing on five of the six tracks. So too was Tobin Sprout, whose “Dodging Invisible Rays” remains one of the highlights of GBV’s most celebrated era. Doug Gillard also makes an appearance—his first on a GBV recording—adding guitar to “Mice Feel Nice.”
Beyond that, no other instrumental contributors are mentioned on the sleeve for Tigerbomb. Recorded in the midst of the band’s “classic era,” we can probably safely assume that Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell were manning the guitar and drum kit somewhere on these six songs. As for bass, it’s possible that any one of Greg Demos, Jim Greer, or Dan Toohey were involved. Then again, Pollard and Sprout very well could have handled any number of the guitar, bass, or drum parts on their own—as they did on the basically-contemporaneous Tonics & Twisted Chasers.
The point of all of this is that, even during the era that produced the most beloved recordings in GBV’s catalog, the band’s lineup was in a nearly-continual state of flux. And with that knowledge, the idea of a “classic lineup reunion” was always something of a misnomer. During the nineties, Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell had only ever played a handful of dates together; and even though all five men had contributed to the totemic Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, they rarely did so together—in fact, the album version of “Motor Away” may be the only pre-reunion recording to feature all five men.
Still, there was something beyond pure symbolism to the classic lineup reuniting for a tour in 2010. Pollard/Sprout were the McLennon/Harrison that drove the songwriting; Mitchell and Fennell were the long-timers that stuck with Pollard through the band’s ascent from nobodies on their own local scene to indie phenomenon; and Demos was such a revered figure in the group, that even his striped pants had their own mythology. Yes, if any lover of GBV’s golden era could draw up their own ideal five-man lineup, this is exactly what most of them would come up with.
However, by 2013, the reunion was beginning to lose a bit of its shine. Critics were generally (and justifiably) kind to the 2012 trio of records (Let’s Go Eat the Factory, Class Clown Spots a UFO, and The Bears for Lunch), even if they argued that Pollard may have been wise to release just one ‘all-killer’ album instead. 2013’s English Little League fared a little worse with the rock press; though some of that may have had to do with the novelty of the reunion wearing off as it reached its fourth calendar year. And—as I alluded to in last week’s piece—Robert Pollard’s continued focus on other solo/side projects suggests that he was (at least compared to a ‘normal’ artist) spreading his songwriting a bit thin.
But even more importantly, there were fractures beginning to emerge within a lineup that had remained uncharacteristically stable. At some point between the recording and release of Motivational Jumpsuit, Kevin Fennell would be dismissed from Guided by Voices, with at least some of the friction between he and Pollard stemming from Fennell’s decision to offer up the drum kit that he had played on Bee Thousand for the princely sum of $55,000. Eventually Fennell would publicly release a series of emails between himself and his former brother-in-law/bandmate; Pollard’s “do not delude yourself, Kevin, that people gave a shit who was behind that drum kit” was a particularly brutal part of the exchange.
This tension didn’t solely emerge from an ill-advised (and ultimately unsuccessful) eBay listing. The sporadic nature of the band’s touring schedule wasn’t too much of a financial strain for some members: Pollard could depend on the income from multiple GBVinc releases each year; Sprout’s career as a solo musician/visual artist likely gave him more flexibility; Greg Demos presumably had leverage stemming from a decades-long career as a lawyer. However, Fennell and Mitch Mitchell had no such advantages. Among the more telling revelations from Fennell’s ‘about face’ in the wake of his failed drum sale was that he had turned down multiple job offers due to his commitment to the ongoing GBV reunion. It brings to mind a scene from Banks Tarver’s 1996 documentary, Watch Me Jumpstart, in which—responding to the band’s newfound attention—Fennell states:
“Sometimes I think that someone’s gonna come along and take it all away from me. Personally, I’ve given up my day job and pretty much poured myself into this; and so it’s no longer just a hobby, like now, it’s for real. It’s the real thing, and it’s scary to think that maybe it could go away.”
Fennell’s first exit from Guided by Voices—not long after that interview—was the result of his backslide into addiction. The second one was, by all appearances, far more complicated; at least in the sense that it sprang from an intra-band conflict between two members with a decidedly complex personal and professional relationship. And as Pollard had bluntly acknowledged in the aforementioned email exchange, Guided by Voices could continue without Kevin Fennell, but not without Bob Pollard.
And so, that’s the way it would be. Like English Little League, Motivational Jumpsuit was preceded by five singles—except that these were all released simultaneously, instead of in staggered two-week increments. They range in quality from ‘pretty good’ to ‘pretty good plus.’ When Jumpsuit arrived in full, it was met with a similar reception to that of its predecessor. From my vantage point, those five singles represented most of the album’s highlights. There may be a few more ‘pretty good’ songs than there had been on English Little League, but there were also a few more that I have a hard time remembering. If you’re keeping score, I give it the exact same rating below that I gave to Little League last week.
And thus, after that initial run of three records, the classic lineup reunion ultimately settled into a stasis that would place it somewhere in the range of similar reunion releases by another pair of American indie rock giants: Pixies and Dinosaur Jr. These reunion records were never an embarrassment, but also never revelatory in the way that each group’s classic work was. And while that’s probably the best that we could reasonably expect, it still feels like a disappointing outcome in some respects.
But here’s where I suppose I need to dig a bit deeper into the receptions/perceptions of such reunions. In the case of Pixies, their ongoing existence has, to many, felt like a betrayal. After all, Kim Deal stuck around while it was merely a celebration of the remarkable catalog that the band had created during their initial run. But Deal split the scene once it pivoted to recording new music. And even though I have dutifully purchased all of the records that the reunited Pixies have released, they feel—for lack of a better word—a bit disingenuous. And though it’s not up to me to decide what constitutes a genuine Pixies record, I still can’t be blamed if I don’t hear the same creative spark that defined Surfer Rosa and Bossanova—or even Teenager of the Year or Dog in the Sand, for that matter.
And in regard to Dinosaur Jr, I suppose that the continued goodwill demonstrated toward their own multi-decade reunion comes partially from the fact that—as both a touring and recording entity—they have maintained the same lineup that they did during their creative heyday. However, it’s also worth nothing that as J Mascis demonstrated during the band’s commercial peak, Dinosaur Jr can exist without Lou Barlow, but not without J Mascis.
So, I guess what I arrive at after all of this is that personnel does matter, even when it “doesn’t matter.” From the outside, we can never really understand the inner-workings of creative partnerships. However, when it comes to the art that those partnerships create, our perceptions of them really do make a difference. And while at the end of the day, Bob Pollard might be Guided by Voices—we’ll tackle that question more directly in a few weeks—I can’t help but believe that the idealized version of GBV consists of a gang of schlubby middle-aged dudes drinking beer in their Dayton basements, cranking out immaculate pop songs in between shifts at their day jobs.
What a perfect fucking thing that was.
Ratings: Motivational Jumpsuit (7.0) / Save the Company (★★★1/2) / Vote for Me Dummy (★★★★) / Alex and the Omegas (★★★1/2) / The Littlest League Possible (★★★★) / Planet Score (★★★1/2)*
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale.
Bob-ism of the Week: “The most rudimentary division of competition / Where no worlds collide / To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond / On the littlest island / Where I shall reside” (“The Littlest League Possible”)
Next Week: The classic lineup reunion shrugs its way to the finish line.
