Wednesday, June 16, 2004
An Unnecessary and Belated Look at Human Amusements at Hourly Rates: The Best of Guided by Voices
This GBV best-of sucks. Where’s “Postal Blowfish”? “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory”? Jesus – fucking “Don’t Stop Now”? That may be one of his five or six best songs ever. Hell, that and pretty much every other song from Under the Bushes are better than two of the three they pulled from that record. Seriously – “Cut-Out Witch”?!? That song’s a turd, a stinky turd. It’s one of the five songs Ice and I are going to play whenever we do our anti-GBV cover band Hot Freaks (there’s no need to say anything about “Hot Freaks” other than it just might be the worst atrocity ever committed by mankind; I do not object to its presence on this compilation, however, as it is a powerful and necessary reminder of the unknowable evil man can inflict upon himself). But Bob Pollard apparently thinks “Witch” is a better song than “Don’t Stop Know”, or “Big Boring Wedding”, or “Your Name is Wild”, or “Bright Paper Werewolves”, or any of the other songs from that same album, every single one of which is exponentially greater than “Cut-Out Witch”. And for the only Tobin song to be “To Remake the Young Flyer”! Great God above. If you’re going to acknowledge Tobin Sprout at all, you absolutely must start with “Gleemer (The Deeds of Fertile Jim)”, his most prescient contribution to our indefatiguable culture. “Young Flyer” is competent, but thoroughly boring and uneventful, and one of Sprout’s least notable songs. Then we’ve got the two flat-out bad singles from Mag Earwhig, “I am a Tree” and “Bulldog Skin”. I know these best-of’s generally contain all the pertinent singles, but the omission of “Hold on Hope” is proof that Pollard didn’t let a song’s status as a single overpower it’s quality when making out this tracklisting. Why couldn’t Pollard have spared us from having to hear, yet again, the sub Foo Fighters, limp-wristed non-cock-rock of “I am a Tree”, the worst GBV single until “Hold on Hope”? “Bulldog Skin” isn’t awful; like “To Remake the Young Flyer”, it’s just boring as hell. Picking out the best songs from Earwhig isn’t an easy thing to do, since most of the record sucks, but there are definitely songs on there better than these. One of them, “Learning to Hunt”, thankfully made the cut, and appears on the best-of, as is it’s right; besides being the best song on GBV’s most boring record, it’s also the best and most effective ballad Pollard wrote about something other than alcohol. It’s a shame that “Sad If I Lost It” isn’t on here as well, instead of either “Tree” or “Bulldog Skin”. I can’t argue with his selections from his last four albums, though; he took the only three listenable songs from 1999’s horrible Do the Collapse (although having the album version of “Teenage FBI” in addition to the earlier seven-inch version would have been nice), and only the best from the rest. “Cheyenne” would have fit on here easily, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, I’m sure this is great to the novices and the uninitiated, and thus has value as a stand-alone disc, but including it in the latest box-set was completely unnecessary. We would have been better served by another live disc, or a collection of the early, pre-Matador seven-inches.
This GBV best-of sucks. Where’s “Postal Blowfish”? “Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory”? Jesus – fucking “Don’t Stop Now”? That may be one of his five or six best songs ever. Hell, that and pretty much every other song from Under the Bushes are better than two of the three they pulled from that record. Seriously – “Cut-Out Witch”?!? That song’s a turd, a stinky turd. It’s one of the five songs Ice and I are going to play whenever we do our anti-GBV cover band Hot Freaks (there’s no need to say anything about “Hot Freaks” other than it just might be the worst atrocity ever committed by mankind; I do not object to its presence on this compilation, however, as it is a powerful and necessary reminder of the unknowable evil man can inflict upon himself). But Bob Pollard apparently thinks “Witch” is a better song than “Don’t Stop Know”, or “Big Boring Wedding”, or “Your Name is Wild”, or “Bright Paper Werewolves”, or any of the other songs from that same album, every single one of which is exponentially greater than “Cut-Out Witch”. And for the only Tobin song to be “To Remake the Young Flyer”! Great God above. If you’re going to acknowledge Tobin Sprout at all, you absolutely must start with “Gleemer (The Deeds of Fertile Jim)”, his most prescient contribution to our indefatiguable culture. “Young Flyer” is competent, but thoroughly boring and uneventful, and one of Sprout’s least notable songs. Then we’ve got the two flat-out bad singles from Mag Earwhig, “I am a Tree” and “Bulldog Skin”. I know these best-of’s generally contain all the pertinent singles, but the omission of “Hold on Hope” is proof that Pollard didn’t let a song’s status as a single overpower it’s quality when making out this tracklisting. Why couldn’t Pollard have spared us from having to hear, yet again, the sub Foo Fighters, limp-wristed non-cock-rock of “I am a Tree”, the worst GBV single until “Hold on Hope”? “Bulldog Skin” isn’t awful; like “To Remake the Young Flyer”, it’s just boring as hell. Picking out the best songs from Earwhig isn’t an easy thing to do, since most of the record sucks, but there are definitely songs on there better than these. One of them, “Learning to Hunt”, thankfully made the cut, and appears on the best-of, as is it’s right; besides being the best song on GBV’s most boring record, it’s also the best and most effective ballad Pollard wrote about something other than alcohol. It’s a shame that “Sad If I Lost It” isn’t on here as well, instead of either “Tree” or “Bulldog Skin”. I can’t argue with his selections from his last four albums, though; he took the only three listenable songs from 1999’s horrible Do the Collapse (although having the album version of “Teenage FBI” in addition to the earlier seven-inch version would have been nice), and only the best from the rest. “Cheyenne” would have fit on here easily, but that’s a minor quibble. Overall, I’m sure this is great to the novices and the uninitiated, and thus has value as a stand-alone disc, but including it in the latest box-set was completely unnecessary. We would have been better served by another live disc, or a collection of the early, pre-Matador seven-inches.
