The Releases: Half Smiles of the Decomposed (LP—Matador, 2004) / The Electrifying Conclusion (Concert Film-Plexifilm, 2005)
Some time in 2004, Robert Pollard pulled the most routine move in his repertoire: announcing a new Guided by Voices record. However, the announcement of GBV’s (let’s go with) seventeenth album was anything but typical; Half Smiles of the Decomposed would be the band’s final record. Yes, after twenty-one years of the most improbable success story in the history of indie rock, Guided by Voices were calling it a day.
When Half Smiles arrived that August, it landed with a reception that unsurprisingly reflected the goodwill earned over the decade that GBV spent in the half-spotlight of the world of alternative rock. While a scattered handful of reviews zealously proclaimed Half Smiles to stand among the group’s finest album-length statements, the general consensus was that it was a solid-if-not-spectacular sendoff for an act whose best days were several years in the rearview mirror.
After all, 2004 represented something of a peak in the halcyon ‘indie goes mainstream’ days of the mid-2000s. And in the light of a more intense glare, what (perhaps) on the exterior looked like a relatively meat-and-potatoes release from a group of middle-aged rock and roll lifers didn’t exactly fit the zeitgeist. Or maybe it did, but perhaps there were just ‘shinier’ distractions around every corner. Even the many pop archetypes that Pollard and company had represented during their heyday provided more compelling alternatives than Half Smiles of the Decomposed.
If you wanted great rock and roll, 2004 offered the likes of The Walkmen’s excellent sophomore release, Bows + Arrows—an album that not only kicked significantly more ass than Half Smiles, but that better reflected the cautious (and ultimately-misguided) optimism of the moment. The same could be said for Modest Mouse’s breakthrough Good News for People Who Love Bad News, or the debut from The Hold Steady, Almost Killed Me: an album and band that, in more ways than one, carried on the GBV legacy.
If elder statesmen from the left side of the dial were your thing, 2004 gave you plenty of options. Sonic Youth continued their late-career renaissance with that year’s solid Sonic Nurse. Tom Waits offered the nervy and unsettling Real Gone, while Wilco did the same with their own highly-anticipated Yankee Hotel Foxtrot follow-up, A Ghost is Born. And Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds released the excellent double record, Abattoir Blues / The Lyre of Orpheus.
If the story of hard-won success from a longtime DIY veteran is what had initially drawn you into the Robert Pollard universe, 2004 gave you the opportunity to bear witness to something similar. That year, John Darnielle’s The Mountain Goats released We Shall All Be Healed, which continued a trajectory that would culminate in the following year’s breakthrough, The Sunset Tree. Albums from formerly ‘lo-fi’ operators like Iron and Wine and Sufjan Stevens were similarly solid, and Elliott Smith’s posthumous From a Basement on the Hill was arguably the best of the indie singer-songwriter bunch.
If it was the brazen ‘WTF’ factor of bedroom masterpieces like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes that you loved most about Guided by Voices, there were plenty of 2004 releases that were far more capable of scratching that particular itch than the relatively ‘trad’ Half Smiles of the Decomposed. The off-kilter homespun charm of Animal Collective’s Sung Tongs, the dizzying pop found in Of Montreal’s Satanic Panic in the Attic, the folky strains of Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender, and the wild ADD-isms of The Fiery Furnaces’ Blueberry Boat all satisfyingly balanced experimentalism with accessibility. And that September, the holy grail of bizarro pop—Brian Wilson’s legendary SMiLE project—would finally see the light of day after a thirty-eight year gestation.
And that same month would see the release of an album that captured the indie rock feeling of the moment, in the same way that Bee Thousand had done a decade prior. Arcade Fire’s era-defining Funeral sounded nothing like GBV’s breakthrough; but where Bee Thousand had inadvertently documented the slacker mentality of its own time—though I’d hesitate to label a man who has written literal thousands of songs as a ‘slacker’—Funeral did something similar for an era whose indie acts would be characterized by earnestness and stadium-sized ambition (not that Pollard ever lacked the latter).
And while it’s possible to simultaneously love Bee Thousand and Funeral—I, and plenty of others, certainly do—I can also fully understand why a person would adore one album and despise the other. These are two records that seem to exist in entirely different realities: one is almost embarrassingly heart-on-sleeve, while the other is absurdist and willfully obscure. And while I could attempt to draw a connection between both records’ capacities for surrealist world-building, the initial point in invoking Funeral remains: if this was the new archetype for indie rock, it’s clear that GBV’s cultural moment had passed.
And—as a then-twenty-five-year-old—in Half Smiles of the Decomposed, I felt like I was listening to a band that was keenly aware of this fact. That’s not to say that I didn’t (or don’t presently) like the album, but there is a sense of fatigue to Half Smiles that feels palpable—even twenty-one years after its arrival. Granted, some of this may have been a product of knowing that it was intended as the final GBV record; but even without that context, the band on Half Smiles seems exhausted.
With that said, Half Smiles gets off to a rousing start. Opener “Everybody Thinks I’m a Raincloud (When I’m Not Looking)” backs up its great title with a hooky blast of classic GBV power-pop. “Sleep Over Jack” trades in an anxiousness that defined earlier greats like “Her Psychology Today,” “Demons Are Real,” and “Always Crush Me.” And the warm and chiming guitars of “The Girls of Wild Strawberries”—featuring a guest spot from Tobin Sprout—result in one of the loviest tracks in Robert Pollard’s oeuvre.
But—aside from the mid-record highlight “The Closets of Henry”—the standard set by that opening trio isn’t matched again until the album closing “Huffman Prairie Flying Field.” In fact, the second half contained some of the least memorable tracks of Guided by Voices’ career to date. And, to one suspecting that GBV fatigue had taken a toll on Pollard’s songwriting, the final lines of “Huffman” seemed to offer up some uncharacteristically direct confirmation:
I’ve come to start up my head
Been closed and locked up
For far too long
Fittingly, Half Smiles of the Decomposed was accompanied by a farewell tour that Pollard dubbed “The Electrifying Conclusion”—named after the climactic line from 1990’s Same Place the Fly Got Smashed. To my dismay, the roughly two-dozen shows did not include a stop in Arizona, which meant that I—as an only semi-recent GBV convert—would never get an opportunity to see the band live. Upon the announcement, I dashed off a quick email to Rich Turiel—the group’s manager, and the listed contact for any tour-related questions—to inquire about any potentially-added dates. Turiel’s response was surprisingly quick and friendly, but ultimately disappointing.
As such, my only experiences of “The Electrifying Conclusion”—and thus live GBV as a whole—came via the 27-inch Sony WEGA television that transmitted several of my most enduring memories of the years 2001-2012. The first of these was the January 2005 airing of the group’s appearance on Austin City Limits from two months prior. A drunken spectacle, arguably best remembered for two moments of infamy from rhythm guitarist Nate Farley—one in which he ambled around the stage while holding a toddler, and another in which he fell off said stage (minus the toddler, thankfully)—the truncated version of City Limits that aired was a mere teaser for the main course.
Released on DVD that November, The Electrifying Conclusion provided the next best thing for all of folks who missed out on the debauchery of GBV’s final show: a four-hour, sixty-three song marathon that straddled the years of 2004 and 2005. Captured at Chicago’s Metro on New Year’s Eve, The Electrifying Conclusion is a ‘warts and all’ view into the GBV live experience. It’s a celebration, a wake, a riot, a slog, an inspiration, a downer, a triumph, and a challenge—all delivered in blasts of perfect two-minute pop confections, performed as enthusiastically and sloppily as one could possibly imagine.
And if all of this sounds like I’m trying to describe one of the most epic nights in the history of rock music with only cautionary praise, you’re picking up on the intended vibe. The Electrifying Conclusion is exhausting. Even watching it in shifts can be exhausting. Being in the audience must have been a genuine test of endurance. And being one of the five men to occupy the stage for the entire evening/early morning hours—except perhaps for the on-stage bartender, Trader Vic—seems to be an experience designed to ensure that none of them would soon harbor any desire to ever perform again as Guided by Voices. For fans, it’s nothing short of essential. But anyone outside of the GBV cult should run for the hills if a full-fledged member of said cult ever suggests watching it together.
And in the end, this was the only way that Guided by Voices ever could have gone out: in a drunkenly hook-filled blaze of glory. And if The Electrifying Conclusion had the ability to leave even some of the truest believers with GBV fatigue, it wouldn’t be too long before the feeling passed. After all—whether long-time supporter or recent convert—only in GBV’s absence could we truly realize just how much we would miss them. In fact, it was a sentiment arguably best captured all the way back in 1993, in a review of The Grand Hour EP from the zine The Storytelling Renaissance, and quoted in Closer You Are—Matthew Cutter’s 2018 biography of Robert Pollard and Guided by Voices:
“We need a band like this, probably more than they need us.”
Hear! Hear! While plenty of other bands that come and go have the ability to capture our attention, none can ever truly fill the unique niche that Guided by Voices does. And fortunately, in time, Robert Pollard would come to realize this fact.
Ratings: Half Smiles of the Decomposed (7.5) / The Electrifying Conclusion (B+)*
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale; and on the rare occasion that we rate films, it is done with a letter-grade.
Bob-ism of the Week: “And twenty-one is the legal age to kill yourself slowly / But eighteen is the legal age to die” (“Sing for Your Meat”)
Next Week: In GBV’s absence, Robert Pollard goes back to the Suitcase for a second round.
