The Release: Alien Lanes (LP—Matador, 1995)
A little while back—and in a context that I don’t even remember—I referred to myself in conversation as an “unpaid music critic.” The unpaid part was a characteristic act of self-deprecation, and something that I don’t like to dwell on too much—though it seems to have come up more than a few times in my writing recently. It’s probably more a product of the always-lengthy stretch of the school year between winter break and spring break, rather than evidence of a low-grade mid-career crisis. But what actually lingered as I pondered that offhand self-description was if I could really claim to be a music critic.
Anybody who has ever perused the pages of Strange Currencies can surmise that I spend a lot of time working on this site, but little of that time has actually been oriented toward music criticism. In five-plus years of writing for Strange Currencies, I’ve only penned a single overtly-negative review, and a majority of what I publish has been little short of gushing. And sure, while some of the Catalog Crawl features that I’ve done begin with albums that are less than stellar, they all eventually build to ones that I marvel at, no matter how many times I listen to them. You’ll definitely hear me badmouth music that I actively dislike in the two podcast series that we’ve produced for Strange Currencies; but still, most of the time this is done in service to highlighting the music that I cherish.
So yeah, if the negative opinions that I share are merely the rare exceptions to the rule, can I really be considered a critic? And if I’m not a music critic, what differentiates me from any other keyboard warrior sharing their thoughts on message boards and comment boxes? The fact that I pay an annual fee for a domain name? The amount of time that I spend on all of this? Maybe I am in the midst of a mid-career crisis, but not for the career in which I actually collect a paycheck.
Now, I know that critic doesn’t have to mean criticizer. However, in the realm of cultural criticism, there’s a definite tendency to treat anything resembling effusive praise with suspicion. Critics are supposed to be objective observers of that which can only be approached subjectively. Critics are supposed to be willing to take down a sacred cow when necessary. Critics are supposed to avoid purple prose, sentimentality, and anything that is too heart-on-sleeve. In the fall of 2000, Pitchfork became the subject of widespread attention and scrutiny following Brett DiCrescenzo’s over-the-top rave of Radiohead’s Kid A—the one that infamously begins, “I had never seen a shooting star before”; and eventually compares listening to the album to “witnessing the stillborn birth of a child while simultaneously having the opportunity to see her play in the afterlife on Imax.” Perhaps tellingly, this is one of my favorite record reviews of all-time; despite my ability to simultaneously acknowledge that it’s utterly ridiculous. I suppose I just get a kick out of people sincerely enjoying things—including their own work.
And, in establishing Strange Currencies as a music site that doesn’t primarily focus on new releases, it means that I’m naturally inclined to cover music that I genuinely enjoy. After all, who has time for bad (or even mediocre) music? If anything, Strange Currencies was just the next phase in a nearly-lifelong campaign to sell other people on the music that I care about. It’s an endeavor that began by making mixtapes for buddies and crushes in high school, then graduated to CD burn-athons, moved online with a Yahoo group page shared with my closest friends, and continues via my teaching of a Music History class that surveys pop music from the 1920s-1970s. If only I had redirected ten percent of the time that I’ve spent pushing other peoples’ music to pushing my own…
And all of this goes toward explaining why this week’s installment of The GBV Project won’t exactly pivot toward the ‘traditional’ review that I know some of you loyal readers were hoping for. You see, Alien Lanes is not an album that I can approach with a lot of objectivity or restraint. It’s not an album that I can give a measured and clinical response to; nor is it one that I am all that keen to keep at arm’s length.
I heard my first Guided by Voices album, Mag Earwhig, in the early summer of 2003; it was acquired—along with Isolation Drills—as part of one of the aforementioned “burn-athons” with a close friend of (now) over thirty years. I had heard of GBV for several years—and suspected that they were right up my alley—but it took his prompting to get me to bite. And yeah, I liked Earwhig right away (which I’ll elaborate on five weeks from now), but as I started to research this band, I kept seeing the same two titles over and over: Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes.
I got Bee Thousand first, in the fall of 2003. In my initial listens, I was (slightly) taken aback by how much more ‘lo-fi’ its four-track recordings were than the ones that I had recently started making with my own Tascam 424. It didn’t take long for me to get over that though. The hooks were too strong. The transitions were too seamless. The lyrics were too perfectly balanced between the relatable and the inscrutable. Over two decades later, it is still my favorite Guided by Voices album; and I suspect that it always will be.
I picked up Alien Lanes within a couple of weeks of Bee Thousand. I don’t recall why, but for some reason my dad was with me when I bought it at Flagstaff’s Gopher Sounds—almost the town’s last independent record store, aside from its short-lived replacement Rock-It-Man. For several months in 2005, that copy was out of my possession. Another friend of (now) thirty years was literally driving off for his honeymoon; and realizing that he had no CDs in his car, it was my responsibility (as his best man) to lend him one for the road. This was the same copy that, a year earlier, was the last full album that the two aforementioned friends and I had listened to before arriving at the campgrounds at Coachella—on the eve of a Pixies reunion that we’d never thought possible.
A few years ago, my oldest kid (now twenty-two) came into possession of that CD, which I had acquired when she was only a year old. By the point in which it changed hands, I had upgraded to a damn-near-pristine first pressing LP: one of the first splurge purchases that I made when I decided to become a “serious” (whatever that means) record collector. While I’d argue that listening on vinyl presents Alien Lanes in its ideal state, it’s far more often that I’ll be found blasting it on my commute (via Spotify), while singing along to every word—well, minus that one…
So no, I can’t be a critic. Not this week. Not when I’ve fashioned this website as another way to share the things that I love with whoever is willing to listen. And yes, we can acknowledge the flaws in the things that we love—tough, outside of that one faux pas, this is a flawless record—but I’ll save the criticism for the things that I don’t love.
I love this album. And so should you.
Rating: 10.0
Bob-ism of the Week: “Chain smoke rings like a vapor snake kiss / She says she don’t know why / The closer you are the quicker it hits you” (“Closer You Are”)
Next Week: GBV close out 1995 with a pair of brief releases, anchored by re-recordings of three Alien Lanes masterpieces.
