Guided By Voices
Propeller
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NATN Recommended
Guided By Voices
Propeller
Rockathon Records, 1992
RiYL: Genesis, R.E.M., Kinks |
In 1992, when "irrational exuberance" briefly clutched "alternative rock" before going on to devour the internet economy, Guided By Voices was a band in name only; that name being Bob Pollard. Not having played live for some years, GBV was not much more of an entity than the lists of fantastical band names and album covers that Pollard had been compiling since teendom (allegedly while fending off the boredom of being the school jock).
Intended as a final album and subsequent surrender to the same fate ascribed to countless other great neglected bands, Propeller has outlasted "irrational exuberance" and Alan Greenspan and "alternative rock" and Kurt Cobain because Pollard and co. overlooked their own apparent failure and recast themselves as legendary, with a side A of classic rock and a side B of pop, trading R.E.M. for the Kinks and back again. Propeller lands gracefully at the denouement of the final song, "On The Tundra": "And then one day/ Maybe today/ We'll justify the joke/ Make it our day/ And blow the total savings/ To satisfy our cravings."
They thought they were kidding.
As soon as that line falls gently, you're flipping the record back over again to relive the tri-part onslaught of "Over The Neptune/ Mesh Gear Fox" and "Weed King." Propeller opens with the now-fulfilled prophecy of an audience shouting "GBV! GBV! GBV!" over and over again. And for next to zero fans (the chant was made up of multiple tracks of the band themselves), GBV unloads a suite of classic rock licks and lyrics delivered with the arched eyebrow of prog. Never forget that Uncle Bob taught weenies to rock, jocks to go lo-fi, and everyone to give Genesis a chance.
Like all of Bob's best albums, Propeller is a triumph of sequencing. Take a Toad The Wet Sprocket album, the first two Living Colours, Eddie Money's greatest hits and the newest John Cale and Pollard would make a cohesive album out of it.
But these are Bob's songs, and it could be presumed that Bob's songs are, next to his family, Bob's life. Propeller emphasizes a love for rock that needed no viability to be grand, to give rock what rock deserves. The narratives often twist unexpectedly: at the climax of "Exit Flagger," Bob decides not to race the enemy flagger today. This echoes the narrative conclusion of several other Pollard songs, one example being 'The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory" (off the grand payoff album, Bee Thousand), in which Bob sings an apparent love song to the mountaintop only to resolve at the end never to go there. In Bob's songs the underdog continually makes his own rules.
"Quality Of Armor" rails against "the secret bogus world," while the musical trappings of the album, and especially of the first side, suggest that the "un-bogus" Propeller bittersweetly reaches for is the world of the rock band that makes it big.
It's quite fitting that the GBV album whose swagger most closely resembles the rhetorical impact of ABBA's Arrival or Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet would be made while Bob was still Mr. Pollard, grade school teacher, as innocently inspired as the protagonist of "Livin' On A Prayer," penning songs full of characters to contend with "Dancing Queen." Like Bob's collections of album covers and band names that preceded their actual existence, GBV released their world-conquering album at a time when the band had hardly left the basement.
Propeller was built to take over the world whether anyone ever heard it or not. The "GBV" chant, the imagery, and the hooks would soon prove contagious, but who cares when you're this good in your basement with your best friends? After all, to quote one of Bob's imaginary band names, they were already "huge on Pluto."
WILL CRAVEN |