Slow Thrills Gigs: Guided By Voices

GUIDED BY VOICES
Belfast Limelight 27th August 2002

As you'll be aware from the previous review of Guided By Voices on this site, my last encounter with them left a lot to be desired. In contrast to that night a year ago when they played a single date in London and no-one had released 'Isolation Drills' in Europe , GBV are now on a full European tour with a fine new Matador-released album to promote.
Spirits are high and from the start you can just feel this will be show to remember. Bob Pollard sets the tone by taking to the stage and launching into the relatively ancient 'Echoes Myron', announcing "as we haven't played here before you might want to hear some older stuff." Damn right! We get a superb 'My Valuable Hunting Knife' next followed by a flat-out 'Cut Out Witch'.
'Things That I Will Keep' slows things down a bit and then we're into the new material with the single 'Everywhere with Helicopter'. Personally I think that 'Universal Truths and Cycles' is the best thing GBV have done for a long time - it manages to be both powerful rock music and hint at psychedelic pop at the same time - maybe early 70s Who is a good reference point (one track is punningly titled 'The Ids are Alright'!). They play a lot of it tonight - the pounding 'Back to the Lake', the relatively epic 'Storm Vibrations and the thirty second adrenalin rush of 'Wire Greyhounds' among the highlights.
'Glad Girls' is the only survivor from 'Isolation Drills' - they go further back into their past and the rest of the set reads like a dream GBV compilation - 'Hot Freaks', 'Teenage FBI', 'Game of Pricks', 'I Am A Scientist', and 'Tractor Rape Chain'.
Some of Pollard's solo material also makes an appearance - 'I Drove a Tank' is probably the pick of the bunch. He plays stuff from the Soft Rock Renegades album as well as Volunteer Fire Dept and all of it fits seemlessly into the current GBV repertoire.
'Motor Away' draws things to a climax and then they send us off into the night with their version of the Beatles 'A Hard Day's Night' ringing in our ears. Guided by Voices are back to being wonderful again.

GUIDED BY VOICES
London Highbury Garage 23rd August 2001
I was looking forward to this so much that it was inevitable I would come away disappointed. GBV are one of my favourite bands and I've seen them quite a few times in the past, and while it's well acknowledged that the purple patch of their long career occurs between 'Bee Thousand' and 'Under the Bushes' albums, the new album 'Isolation Drills' is rather impressive and a step forward from the straighforward pop/rock of its predecessor 'Do the Collapse'. Shame that no-one has released it in the UK yet.
However, GBV is much more complicated these days, and with frequent line-up changes, last year's 'Suitcase'10CD box of unreleased material and a seemingly unstoppable surge of extra-curricular releases from mainman Robert Pollard and his Fading Captain label, it's hard to keep up. That's really the main problem tonight - lack of familiarity with the songs. In the first half hour we get songs from 'Suitcase', songs from the new record Pollard has made with Tobin Sprout (ex-GBV other songwriter), songs from his new solo album, and precious little from 'Isolation Drills'. Alhough all of this is accompanied by Pollard's semi-legendary high-kicking and mic-swinging, his band never become anything more than dull grunge-rock, and with such a range of influences going into Pollard's songs, that's a real shame.
Bizarrely they even choose dull stuff from albums we might know - 'In Stitches' from 'Do the Collapse' and 'The enemy' from 'Isolation Drills', and only 'Don't Stop Now' and a very fine 'Tractor Rape Chain' save the day.
Needless to say, that with such a strong back catalogue a GBV show could never be a complete disaster, and it only takes the opening chords of 'Game of Pricks' to get things back on track. Seemingly energised by the older material they step it up a gear . 'Pricks' is followed by a hyper 'Cut Out Witch', then 'Teenage FBI', 'I Am A Scientist', 'Things I Will Keep' and a good few more, ending the whole show on a high. The thing is though, I can remember when GBV shows were like this all the way. Given Pollard's hyperactivity and the line-up changes, it's not impossible that they might be again.