Hey! It’s been awhile, right? Sorry to step away unannounced, but in all honesty, writing regular features for Strange Currencies was starting to feel a lot like unpaid labor (which it is), but the kind that is done out of obligation as opposed to genuine enthusiasm. I’ve been filling the time since our last article—holy shit, all the way back in June?!?—wrapping up the Talkin’ Down the Highway podcast, working on more “Royalty Free (To Us)” music, and reengaging with my record collection without having the burden of writing in mind.
But a new year means (at least in this case, and at this particular moment) a renewed dedication to Strange Currencies. Truth is, much of the apparent inactivity that began last summer was the result of some behind-the-scenes work on an offshoot project—focused specifically on American garage rock—that will hopefully launch later this year. It won’t mean the end of Strange Currencies, but it will signal a shift in a more-defined, focused direction for a labor of love that, as of today, is embarking upon its sixth(!) calendar year.
My aforementioned freelance listening has been organically directed toward engaging with complete catalogs, albeit in a much different manner than when I was working on Catalog Crawl features. While I believe that those articles hold value, they started to feel less like authentic (whatever that means) music writing to me, and more like the list-based journalism that passes for music criticism in our present age. It’s a tired format, and while I feel that our Catalog Crawls were far more substantive than the average listicle, it did suck some life out of my own enthusiasm for music journalism. The thing is, I still really enjoy the process of diving deep into a beloved artist’s catalog and sharing the results of those dives with you all.
And so, I’ve decided to push myself back out there, but in a somewhat different capacity. See, most artists have catalogs that can be thoroughly explored over the course of a few weeks. For example, I spent the end of 2024 in a chronological revisitation of Pavement’s entire catalog—updating my reviews and ratings on the invaluable resource that is RateYourMusic. It was a tidy project, and above all else, a thoroughly enjoyable and pressure-free way to reconnect with some of my favorite music ever recorded. But, when it was all over, there wasn’t really any need to turn that into any kind of article or feature—largely because my Strange Currencies colleagues and I already thoroughly tackled the band during 2022’s Pavement Month.
That got me thinking: What is a way that I can similarly reengage with another beloved catalog, but also have it yield results that feel like worthwhile music journalism? The answer came to me in the form of the almost-comically-prolific Guided by Voices. Sure, I covered GBV in the first ever Catalog Crawl, but that was over three years ago. Since then, Robert Pollard and company have released six new albums. Besides, that feature only scratched the surface of the band’s catalog, with “mini reviews” that were little more than blurbs. So what if I were to really engage with the GBV discography? Every album. Every EP. Every single. Every compilation of outtakes. In sum total, we’re talking well over a thousand songs. What if I decided to spend the entirety of 2025 doing so—still leaving ample time to listen to whatever strikes my fancy, while also working on other projects—and shared my findings with the loyal readers of Strange Currencies?
Thus, I present to you “The GBV Project”:
The methodology here is relatively straightforward: I’ve divided the entire Guided by Voices catalog (no side projects) into fifty-three segments: one for each Wednesday in 2025. Each LP, significant EP, and compilation will get its own weekly feature that will cover the release in question, as well as any relevant singles, attendant B-sides, and contemporaneous GBV releases. My initial list yielded fifty such features. The fifty-first is reserved for the forthcoming LP, Universe Room (out on February 7th). That leaves two extra weeks for any unannounced-as-of-yet 2025 releases.
This is, in some ways, setting up to be a test of endurance. Chances are I get tired of keeping up with it, sidetracked by making my own music, and/or overwhelmed by the more important responsibilities of family, work, and other projects. Could be that it ultimately doesn’t feel that much more worthwhile than making ranked lists. Could be that these features start to drift away from the Robert Pollard multiverse, and become weekly musings on whatever shinier object happens to capture my attention—or frustration—that particular week. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
With that preamble out of the way, onward to Week 1.
The Release: Forever Since Breakfast (EP—I Wanna Records, 1986)
It would seem appropriate for the first of these features to spend some time talking about the backstory of Guided by Voices, and Robert Pollard in particular—after all, I know that at least a few people who will read these pieces out of perceived obligation to their author are far from dyed-in-the-wool GBV enthusiasts. However, I think I’d prefer to cover the important biographical beats in time, over the course of the project as a whole. So, in lieu of a full overview, I’ll just provide a few broad-stroke introductory points—all of which will be expounded upon over the next fifty-two weeks. Here they are, in no particular order:
- Bob Pollard is—unambiguously—a product of Dayton, Ohio: specifically the blue collar Northridge neighborhood. He has resided there his entire life, and today lives just a few blocks from the house that he grew up in.
- Pollard is Guided by Voices. Over the course of nearly forty years, dozens of other musicians have been a part of the band—including key collaborators like Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Doug Gillard, and Pollard’s younger brother Jimmy—but GBV could just as well stand for “Guided by Bob’s Vision.”
- As mentioned in the preamble, Robert Pollard is absurdly prolific. The GBV catalog alone stands at approximately forty full-length albums, but those represent just the beginning of the story. Between singles, outtakes, compilations, and dozens of solo-/side-projects, Pollard’s body of work includes thousands of released songs, and an unknowable number of unreleased ones.
- Success came slowly for Guided by Voices. GBV was a recording entity for about a decade before anyone outside of Dayton took notice. Even then, Dayton itself largely shunned Pollard’s earliest efforts as a recording and performing artist. Also relevant: before GBV’s eventual breakthrough, Pollard spent fourteen years as a teacher—mostly at the elementary school level.
- Robert Pollard is a singular figure in American music. Unequivocal evidence in support of this statement will be presented over the course of this project, but know at the outset that—in terms of prolificacy and uniqueness of artistic vision—there is nobody in the history of rock/pop music quite like Robert Ellsworth Pollard Jr.
And now, a few notes—mostly trivial—about the first Guided by Voices release, Forever Since Breakfast:
- The EP got its name from a quote by Charles Manson in an interview with Tom Snyder.
- GBV were largely motivated to book a studio session after a rival local band—The Highwaymen—released an EP of their own.
- Six of the seven songs that comprise Forever Since Breakfast were recorded at Group Effort Studios in Crescent Springs, Kentucky in the spring of 1986. The other (“Like I Do”) was captured to tape by Robert Pollard, alone, on guitarist Paul Comstock’s Fostex X-15 four-track recorder.
- According to Pollard, for the release of the EP, GBV “put ourselves on I Wanna (Records)” without permission. I’m not entirely sure how this worked; meaning, did the band just put the logo of a small (but completely unaffiliated) local label on their album jacket in an effort to make their album look more legitimate? If so, the next thing that I release will be on Matador Records (without permission, probably).
- Pollard—on multiple occasions—has dismissed the end result as “sterile.” For what it’s worth, Forever Since Breakfast would be the most “professional” sounding GBV release for at least a decade.
As for the contents of Forever Since Breakfast, much has been made of how the first GBV release sounds a lot like another indie rock institution: R.E.M.. While I’d argue that the similarities are overemphasized—understandable, as it’s slightly jarring to hear such an idiosyncratic band’s formative work sounding anything like that of another group—there’s no doubt that GBV were among the countless American indie bands of the mid-eighties to adopt hallmarks of R.E.M.s IRS era sound. In particular, the jangly guitar work of Paul Comstock draws directly (and heavily) from the School of Peter Buck. However, it’s also worth noting that the sixties pop that Robert Pollard grew up on informs much of Forever Since Breakfast, providing a sturdy link between early GBV and the contemporaneous Paisley Underground scene.
It’s similarly jarring to hear Pollard not yet displaying the unmistakable quirks that would come to define his songwriting. The seven tracks that form Forever Since Breakfast are surprisingly direct in their lyrical content. Every once in a while there is a glimmer of what’s to come—we do have a decent “Bob-ism of the Week” (see below)—but it’s not impossible, or even all that difficult, to imagine these songs coming from someone else entirely. Still, that’s not to suggest that these tracks are without character. In fact, one could argue that Breakfast stands among the more consistent early-GBV releases.
For many listeners it’s the A-side closer, “Sometimes I Cry,” that best exemplifies the charms of Forever Since Breakfast. Compositionally, it’s the track that most resembles later GBV. The pairing of jangly and slow-burning guitars could be seen as a vague template for later classics like “Twilight Campfighter,” and the spirited tempo provides a nice jolt of energy—especially after the more restrained and sparse “Like I Do.” Speaking of that track, it’s clearly the one piece here that foreshadows the decidedly lo-fi aesthetic that would come to define GBV’s most treasured recordings. It was in that low-budget, homespun mode—born from a combination of convenience and necessity—that Pollard would ultimately find his voice.
And while those two songs—for very different reasons—provide much of the contemporary intrigue of Forever Since Breakfast, for my money it’s the closing “The Other Place” that stands as the EPs finest moment. Like “Sometimes I Cry,” the upbeat pacing helps to distinguish “The Other Place” from the mostly mid-tempo tracks that fill out the program; but it’s the melodic elements—found in Pollard’s vocals, the ringing arpeggios, and the playful bass line from Mitch Mitchell—that truly set it apart from the pack. In a particularly generous mood, I’d be tempted to call it Pollard’s first classic.
But ultimately, it’s just that first-ness that defines Forever Since Breakfast on the whole. In 1986, not even Robert Pollard himself could predict the metaphorical iceberg for which Breakfast merely represented the tip. However, he and Mitch Mitchell were plenty capable of understanding its real-time significance. In James Greer’s 2005 book Guided by Voices: A Brief History, Pollard shares the following anecdote:
“I was still amazed that we had actually made a record—something you could hold in your hand, a physical product, just like the ones I combed through at the record stores. I remember when Mitch and I went to pick them up. We couldn’t wait to tear the boxes open. We wept, I believe.”
As someone who has shared this same experience—weeping included—I get it. The act of making recordings on your own—as Pollard had been doing for years prior to setting foot in Group Effort Studios—can be a genuinely rewarding experience. However, little can compare to the first time you hold a completed product—I hate most connotations of that word, but it works here—that began with your vision, but which also required the labors and efforts of actual paid professionals, in your own hands. Even if you had to foot the bill, as Pollard and (at least some of) his bandmates did, there’s still a legitimacy around that artifact: one that even the best of your exclusively-homespun projects can’t touch. Then to see it in an actual record store—sharing bin space with all of the other “real” albums—is on another level entirely.
And this all must have been particularly sweet for Bob Pollard. After all, between first deciding that he wanted to be a musician and ultimately forming something resembling an actual band, Pollard had taken up a hobby that most others in his orbit—and eventually himself—found to be quite “mad.” For years, he had crafted imaginary album covers for imaginary bands. However, these weren’t just visual art projects. Pollard imagined himself being in these bands: groups like The Medics, Ricked Wicky, Dash Riprock & The Hairspray Boys, and The Stella—the latter of which had eighteen(!) different releases. For each of these imaginary albums Pollard created a track list. Some were concept albums. Most of these imaginary acts even had an entire ethos behind them. Pollard clearly was engaging in some serious world-building.
And once he finally began making actual music, Pollard remained every bit as prolific. He captured countless songs on recordable eight-track tapes using the “Buzzing One-Stringer” guitar that his brother Jimmy had gifted to him. These tapes collected age in a heavy vinyl carrying case—a mistakenly-dubbed “suitcase” of which looms largely in GBV lore—that Pollard had acquired during a three-week stint working for Freund Precision. Eventually these recordings came to include contributions from Pollard’s friends and drinking buddies. Notably, a batch credited to a group dubbed Coyote Call—which featured future GBV stalwarts Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell—was conceived as an entire album titled Pissing in the Canal.
But as good as some of those early recordings were—Pissing in the Canal is not only excellent, but it also features embryonic versions of a handful of Pollard’s later masterworks—Forever Since Breakfast was ‘official.’ And even though Pollard had some reservations about the finished product, he and his bandmates were enthusiastic about pitching it on the local Dayton scene. And therein lies the rub. See, the thing about making music is that just because you’ve made something good—and I genuinely believe that at least two of the five albums that I’ve put out into the world would qualify as such—it doesn’t guarantee that anyone outside of those who created it will actually care about, or even notice, it.
And this became the fate of Forever Since Breakfast. “We couldn’t give [it] away,” claims Pollard in A Brief History. The five hundred copies—which Pollard had taken out a loan in order to have pressed—largely stayed in the same boxes that he and Mitchell had so excitedly picked them up in. And, as someone who has several similar boxes in their own garage, I can attest to the fact that these items quickly become not-so-subtle reminders of the indifference with which a project born of hope and enthusiasm was ultimately received; and that, eventually, they simply become objects of resentment.
However, I haven’t—at least yet—turned to disposing of those articles in quite as public a manner as Pollard and Mitch Mitchell did. In A Brief History, Pollard recalls a night attending a practice of a Dayton band called The Scam:
“Me and Mitch were drinking, and we had brought a box of Forevers to give away to people, and eventually, I don’t know why, probably because we were drunk, we started throwing them against the wall…We must have smashed up about fifteen or twenty. Some local promoter called us ‘schmucks’ for destroying our own records…I felt like, ‘Fuck you, they’re our records, we paid for ’em, we can do whatever we want with them.'”
Of the copies that survived this spontaneous act of destruction, the most recent to sell on Discogs went for $324.99 this past June.
Rating: 7.6
Bob-ism of the Week: “She looked up in the noonday sun, said, ‘Fighter jets are so unreal’ / But we’ve got a job to be done, come on” (“Let’s Ride”)
Next Week: GBV release their first full-length LP—seven tracks, and seven whole minutes(!), longer than Forever Since Breakfast—but the reception largely remains the same.
