Top Forty by Forty

 Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand (1994) I know some records will be in my Top 40 without even having to consider whether they will make the final cut or not. Some of these are because they are formative records for me, representing milestones in my my own discovery of music, and Bee Thousand  is certainly that.  It's not the first GBV album I heard - that was their 1999 release Do the Collapse  - but I did get it shortly after that record, which I heard by discovering the band on a live show they played for John Peel around that time. Do the Collapse  is good (despite what some may say!) but Bee Thousand  is almost perfect.  I think it must be the first lo-fi album I ever heard and that was a bit of a surprise, but once you get beyond the ramshackle production you'll be rewarded with 20 cracking indie rock songs in just 36 minutes. The short songs come and go and flow together like a magic mix. Some of the band's best songs ever are on this record and ...