Discerning geezer that he is, your reviewer recently made the cogent point that while GUIDED BY VOICES' recent album, "Earthquake Glue" was an excellent album ( and it improves with continued liaisons), it was a little thin in the obvious singles stakes a la "Everywhere With Helicopter" or "Back To The Lake."
"The Best Of Jill Hives" is a pretty good choice, though. OK, it's not got the crunching enthusiasm-ago-go of either "Useless Inventions" or "She Goes Off At Night" (both of which must surely have been in the running as well), but it's still a memorable affair. Bass-heavy and nagging, it's one of those bittersweet marvels Bob and co. do so well, with an addictive line in melancholy swimming along in the undertow and a tendency to smoulder and sway rather than rock. Very nice, in layman's terms.
For the B-sides, we get two freshly simmering treats. Initially, you don't think of Guided By Voices when obsessed with existential confessionals, but then you recall the likes of songs like "The Weeping Bogeyman" (from "Universal Truths & Cycles" in case you were panicking) and realise the crestfallen charms of the Doug Gillard-penned "Free Of This World" aren't such a departure at all. Besides, it's got one of those assertively adrenalised little mini-solos he excels in, so you're soon back on happily familiar turf.
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To round things off we get a faithful smash'n'grab raid on Cheap Trick's "Downed." If you're not familiar with this enduring US power-pop arena-stuffing phenomena, they feature one Rick Neilson, who used to come onstage looking like a melovolent suburban card sharp weilding a strange line in curiously-shaped, pop-art guitars. Oh, and their drummer was (still is, I think) called Bun.E.Carlos. Like Kiss they were a curious phenonema, but unlike Gene Simmons' crew actually had tunes to match the wacky/desperate (delete as applicable) image. "Downed" is no exception, sounding like a flared-leg version of GBV'S sound, with added cowbell, so it's no surprise Pollard's chums make it sound so effortlessly like their own.
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