Force Fields at Home

Teenage Guitar - "Force Fields at Home" (2013) - Gbv Inc.

Oh Boy Friends,

We got a weird one going tonight.  

Teenage Guitar is the name given to Bob Pollard's latest lo-fi project and according to the record's press release:

"Teenage Guitar offers experiments in spontaneity and lo-fi witchiness and wizardry, exploring multiple moods and styles."

Low-fi Witchiness & Wizardry? I'll say.  

Its not that its terrible, its just really scattered & underdeveloped (even by Guided By Voices' standards).  Some of it sounds like the songs have never been rehearsed.  Some of it sounds like its being recorded in a tin can.  Most of it sounds like late night bedroom demo recordings of early Who songs. When you look at it this way, I guess the name Teenage Guitar is apropos.

Still, Side Two's "Atlantic Cod" is pretty goddamn amazing. 

RATING: 3.5 Postcards to Pinky (wish you were there) out of 5

Bee Thousand: The Director's Cut

Ashes on the turntable, books knocked over, beer spilled in Rorschach patterns on the rug, and crudely drawn UFOs scrawled on cocktail napkins.

Yup, we must’ve listened to a Guided by Voices record last night.

Bee Thousand, the 1994 release by the prolific Kings of lo-fi Guided by Voices, is no small feat. In fact, it’s a rough masterpiece drawing sounds from the British invasion, psych, prog rock and punk. The album is working something out as it goes and you can hear the evolution of songs actually occurring. While a lot of the material may be off-putting (the recording is so piss poor on some of these tracks, it’s like somebody threw cassette tapes in a swimming pool and a lot of the lyrics are about spacecraft and warlocks), the sheer brilliance of lead singer Bob Pollard rears itself in unimaginable ways. The true shame of it all is that so much of his beautiful stuff gets lost in the fray.

I can’t sell you on this band. It’s too tall of an order. Getting into this band means drowning in an endless abyss of record releases. You end up lost in a laboratory full of Pollard’s test tubes and beakers of frothing weirdo genius. And nobody really wants to hear about this band at cocktail parties, believe me.

But while Bee Thousand may be a hurtle for some, it is salvation for others. It really is some kind of indescribable magic.

Tiki’s Track Picks: "Smothered in Hugs", "Tractor Rape Chain", "The Goldheart Mountain Top Queen Directory."

XO! -Tiki T