Under The Bushes Under The Stars

Performer: Guided by Voices
Producer: Kim Deal
Distributor: Alternative Dis. Alliance

Notes: Tracks 19-24 are not listed on the CD package, but they are listed on the disc itself. Guided By Voices includes: Robert Pollard. Additional personnel: Tripp Lamkins (guitar); Shelby Bryant (strings); John Shough (piano); Shelby Bryant (strings). Engineers include: John Shough, Doug Easley, Davis McCain. Principally recorded at Cro-Magnon Studios, Dayton, Ohio and Easley Studios, Memphis, Tennessee. Personnel: Robert Pollard (vocals); Tripp Lamkins, Jim O'Rourke (guitar); Shelby Bryant (strings); John Shough (piano). Audio Remixers: Alan Day ; Gary King. Recording information: Chicago, IL; Cro-Magnon Recording, Dayton, OH; Easley Recording Studios, Memphis, TN; Easley, Memphis, TN. 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 UNDER THE BUSHES 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 GBV couldn't ditch if they wanted to: hooks galore.

Rolling Stone (4/4/96, p.60) - 3 Stars (out of 5) - "...Stunning tracks like `Cut -Out Witch,' `Underwater Explosions' and `Bright Paper Werevolves' sound as if they were recorded while the passion was still flowing and scribbled notebook paper was still lying on the floor of the rehearsal space..." Spin (5/96, p.104) - 6 (out of 10) - "...GBV continue to thrive on willful imperfection..." Entertainment Weekly (3/29/96, p.64) - "...singer Robert Pollard writes the best melodies around, and his lyrics are consistently breathtaking in their surrealistic beauty." - Rating: B+ Alternative Press (5/96, p.78) - 4 (out of 5) - "...there are too many great songs here to digest in one sitting, with each track revealing its own peculiar charm and hook..." Option (7-8/96, p.107) - "...that they've changed their sound little to cope with their sudden hepness is to their credit: UNDER THE BUSHES, despite its purported semi hi-fi origins, sounds only vaguely more polished than, say, BEE THOUSAND, and easily as fine..." Musician (6/96, p.84) - "...GBV delivers melancholy Beatlemania through the sound of a crummy transistor radio. Still there are gems that resist the band's attempts to camouflage their brilliance..." New York Times (Publisher) (3/31/96, sec.2, p.32) - "...Robert Pollard continues to pour out songs that could hold their own as Beatles outtakes....The melodies are winsome and tied to the trusty guitars of 1960's-style Mersey beat and folk-rock. And the words mix brilliant non sequiturs with flashes of psychological clarity..." NME (Magazine) (3/23/96, p.47) - 8 (out of 10) - "...Songs so undeniably strong that most bands would pump them up into epic show-stoppers are tossed off as if they were stoned doodles. The result is a crazed, catchy and enjoyably frustrating experience..."

Led by former school teacher Robert Pollard, Dayton, OH's Guided By Voices pursued an aesthetic marked by structural brevity, lo-fi sound, bizarre lyrics, and a preference for early to mid-period Who and other primal pop-rock. Pollard continually shifted the group's lineup, with a new outfit backing him on nearly every record. On 1999's DO THE COLLAPSE, GBV polished its sound considerably, bringing in Ric Ocasek as a producer. GBV played their final show on New Year's Eve 2004, however Pollard continues to write and record as a solo artist and with various collaborators.

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