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Selection: Guided by Voices - Bee Thousand

 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 most of the melodies and lyrics are firmly embedded in my memory from years of overplaying them. 1999 was early in my indie phase (a late starter - more on that in future posts) so I didn't really have much of a record collection then and I ended up bingeing this album via the medium of portable minidisc player while walking to and from friends' houses.

I still love GBV and they have some other records that may be contenders for my Top 40 but this one is a cert. Their next album was Alien Lanes which some will think is better. Crucially, for some reason I didn't get around to hearing it until much later than 1999 so it never sounded quite as essential to me. Perhaps if it been first it would have made the cut. I do wonder if most people will skew towards records they heard at an impressionable age when they compile their ballots.
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