Guided by Voices proves it’s still got it, kind of

Sometime early in middle school I got it into my head that I wanted to be a rock star, or something close to it, and I signed up for guitar lessons. Every Wednesday evening, my older brother drove me to the music shop on the back side of a strip mall where, for thirty minutes at a time, I attempted to wrap my hands around a bar chord. As I would soon learn, being a rock star takes time, calluses and (preferably) a post-pubescent vocal range. Within a couple months, I was done. (Update: I am a competent guitar player these days. Do you know “Wonderwall”?)

I’ve forgotten nearly every detail of what happened in those lessons. What I remember is driving there each week. One of the overlooked benefits of being a middle child is the wealth of culture handed down to you. For me, this came in the form of burned CDs my brother would play during the fifteen-minute car ride, my initiation to indie rock elder statesmen like Wilco and the Dismemberment Plan.

Of the music I heard on those car rides, a certain band stood out to me. I was perplexed by how this band packed thirty songs onto a single album, each an abrupt vignette that seemed to cut off as soon as it caught on. I was entranced by a sound at once immediate and otherworldly, intimate enough for headphones yet rowdy enough for head-banging—and for years I could not remember its name.

It was only recently, when I came across a copy of “Bee Thousand” in a used CD store, that I rediscovered Guided by Voices, and with it, a cult following on equal footing with Phish and the Grateful Dead. Though the average bystander could be forgiven for never having heard of the band, Guided by Voices has exerted an untold influence on alternative music as leaders of the “lo-fi” movement. Their sprawling catalog dates back to 1987, to say nothing of the various offshoots and solo projects of frontman Robert Pollard. To know Guided by Voices is to enter a world with its own set of rituals and codes. They even have a chant: “G-B-V! G-B-V!”

In reality, the “band” is more a collective of rotating musicians with Pollard as its nucleus. They officially disbanded in 2004, and again in 2014, but their latest tour makes it evident that as long as Pollard lives, so does Guided by Voices. When they entered the Cat’s Cradle Saturday night, it was as a different band than the so-called classic lineup that released “Bee Thousand” over twenty years ago.

Gone were the yearning melodies of Tobin Sprout, Pollard’s musical foil made in heaven. Gone were Greg Demos’ signature striped pants and Mitch Mitchell’s windmilling guitar. In their place was a fresh lineup with a guitarist who could have passed for the son of fifty-nine-year-old Pollard.

Without all the parts that made the group special in the first place, something was inevitably missing. For many devotees, Guided by Voices is a relic of the past, despite the fact that they are still putting out new material—a point which Pollard insistently peddled, though he seemed to realize their new releases weren’t on the minds of much of the audience (“Bear with us, this is a new one,” he said at one point).

But this was a Guided by Voices show nonetheless, and the GBV trademarks remained: a mic-twirling Robert Pollard, still nimble after all these years, stalked and stumbled and scissor-kicked about the stage. They played “Game of Pricks.” They played “I Am a Scientist.” They came back out for three (three) encores. The beer overfloweth.