Bee Thousand

Guided by Voices

album cover

Record Geek Makes Good

As a young man, Guided by Voices singer and songwriter Robert Pollard lived the record-geek rock and roll dream. He was the kid who knew every note of the rock canon (right down to the rare British B sides), the type who'd spent his entire youth and young manhood in the garage, writing songs openly derived from those of his heroes. Then, after years of this, his songs suddenly stopped being so derivative. They acquired a disarming catchiness, a cocktail of familiar elements that somehow ends up tasting exotic anyway. Through several lineup changes, GBV was never a commercial force. But it became something even rarer: the cult act propelled by critics and the cognoscenti into a rare position of influence.

Bee Thousand is the first album on which Pollard's rock worship fully coalesces. In his best songs, the guitar-pummeling intensity of the Who bumps into the melodic finery of the Beatles, creating a musical delirium that atones for Pollard's cryptic lyrics. Just the song titles hint at the willful obfuscation in store: "Gold Star for Robot Boy," "Her Psychology Today," and "Kicker of Elves." On those songs and others, though, Pollard's words are secondary to his vocal melodies: "Tractor Rape Chain," one of several tunes that echo the anthem era, finds him singing behind a thick curtain of guitars, an obliterating drone that nearly drowns him out.

When Bee Thousand appeared, Pollard was making his living teaching grade school and playing Dayton, Ohio, clubs on weekends. Within a year, he became a full-time rocker, and as the band began attracting national attention, he acquired a reputation as an onstage wildman. The antics helped "sell" Guided by Voices, but the songwriting is Pollard's lasting legacy—virtually every GBV album that has followed this one, and there have been many, contains flashes of drop-dead hook-happy greatness.

Genre: Rock
Released: 1994, Scat/Matador
Key Tracks: "Hardcore UFOs," "Tractor Rape Chain," "Hot Freaks," "Gold Star for Robot Boy," "Kicker of Elves."
Catalog Choice: Half Smiles of the Decomposed; Alien Lanes
Next Stop: Sebadoh: Sebadoh III
After That: Dinosaur Jr.: Where You Been
Book Pages: 329–330

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#1 from Luke Wienecke - 07/29/2010 11:19

It’s simply an amazing album. Once you get beyond how utterly lo-fi it is (and proud it is of that), you’ll hear some of the best pop songs you’ve heard since the ‘60’s. I made up a list of my favorite albums of all time a year or so back, and I couldn’t help but place this one in the top ten, among “Pet Sounds” and “The White Album”, and other stone cold classics. It’s a shame Pollard was born about 20 years too late. If he had been around in the 1960’s, he would’ve been as popular as Lennon/McCartney, and would’ve put out more songs as well. Utterly essential. Once you break the hard shell that is the low recording quality, you’ll get to the best, sweetest nut of a record ever.

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

This is an online version of the list (published alphabetically in the book). The entries in the book break down genre bias and broaden every listener’s horizons—think Miles Davis to Claude Debussy to the melodic story-songs of The Decemberists. And the writing is passionate, informed, opinionated.

More about the book

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