Guided By Voices - Under The Bushes Under The Stars (Vinyl Record 2LP)

Pestered by complaints that they were wasting perfect hooks by not bothering to finish them, lo-fi pop avatars Guided By Voices set out to prove they could make a proper pop album if they really wanted to. Then they ditched it like just another melody line in Robert Pollard's overly fertile head. On the way to releasing this, their ninth album, the band tossed out most of a set of songs recorded with uber-producer Steve Albini and with Kim Deal of the Breeders, and replaced them with some random pop matter written and recorded on the fly after they were supposed to be done.

Lo-fi and whimsical they remain, but much of the original pop ambition for 1996's Under The Bushes Under The Stars can be heard on the final product; it's easily the band's most accessible album. Verses and choruses repeat up to three times, songs clock in over three minutes, and someone plays a piano; by GBV standards, this is perfectly baroque. But among the rush of power-pop hooks and new-wave touches, there is also an anti-pop undercurrent.

The gorgeous acoustic tone of "Acorns & Orioles," for example, is invaded by a howling noise that continues, unabated, through the next two tracks as well. What remains in the end, in the power-pop drive of "Your Name Is Wild" and the skittering guitar wallop of "Man Called Aerodynamics," is the one thing Guided By Voices couldn't ditch if they wanted to: hooks galore.

Under The Bushes Under The Stars is the last Guided By Voices album with the original classic lineup of Pollard/Sprout/Mitchell/Fennell until the 2012 reunion album Let's Go Eat the Factory. Features the singles "The Official Ironman Rally Song," "Cut-Out Witch" and "Your Name Is Wild," along with fan favorites "Don't Stop Now," "To Remake The Young Flyer" and "Drag Days."

LP1

1. Man Called Aerodynamics
2. Rhine Jive Click
3. Cut-Out Witch
4. Burning Flag Birthday Suit
5. Official Ironmen Rally Song, The
6. To Remake The Young Flyer
7. No Sky
8. Bright Paper Werewolves
9. Lord Of Overstock
10. Your Name Is Wild
11. Ghosts Of A Different Dream
12. Acorns & Orioles
13. Look At Them
14. The Perfect Life
15. Underwater Explosions
16. Atom Eyes
17. Don't Stop Now
18. Office Of Hearts

LP2

1. Big Boring Wedding
2. It's Like Soul Man
3. Drag Days
4. Sheetkickers
5. Redmen And Their Wives
6. Take To The Sky