BEE THOUSAND is the 7th album by lo-fi indie rock band Guided by voices, released 1994. But is it good?
Guided by Voices is just one of the name you're bound to stumble on if you spend enough time consuming music, however, finding a starting point amongst 34 albums is understandably difficult. But this one was the first bold on on RYM, so here we are.
I feel it's important to say now that this album is quite lo-fi, and with a 36 minute runtime and 20 tracks, the average length is very short compared to a normal album, and due to there being this many I of course wont do a track-by-track like normal. Anyway.
The album opens with "hardcore UFO's", and the style makes itself apparent quickly. Despite the British sounding vocals, the singer is actually Robert Pollard from Ohio. The fuzzy wall of guitar noise and catchy vocal melody singing these weird lyrics didn't catch my interest at first, but now I'm 5 or 6 listens deep they really just click and work.
Second track "buzzards and dreadful crows" exemplifies Pollard's uncanny ability for writing catchy hooks, with these British punkish inspired vocals singing "buzzards and dreadful crows, a necessary evil, I suppose" which, again, doesn't sound like much at first, but repeat listens let you pick out these catchy hooks through the distortion.
The track titles only get weirder with "tractor rape chain", aswell as being the longest track at 3:04 (yeh, really) it has one of the catchiest hooks which just consists of singing the namesake, which really doesn't feel like something you should do, but it's still just really really good. As you may have gathered by this point this is probably not an album you'll "get" on first listen even if you are accustomed to lo-fi music, but this is definitely more of a grower than a shower.
"Hot freaks" has these velvet underground inspired snarling vocals, maybe with hints of Jean Genie by Bowie, and the chorus AGAIN is unreasonably sticky.
Track 6, "smothered in hugs" is easily my favourite song. I remember I heard Sammy Tweedy play it acoustically on the Tweedy show and even there I thought it was great, and even the distorted, pounding drum driven album version is awesome. The song just feels like it exists on it's own plane of existence, the vocal melody as well as the lyrics are just on point, and it's just inexplicably heart wrenching. Just an otherwordly song.
I feel like it's important to say at this point that the drumming is just on point on this album, like any point there are drums they just work so, so well. They add energy and structure to tracks that they wouldn't have otherwise.
The lo-fi aspect of the album is occasionally to the detriment of the album too however, on tracks like "mincer ray" I can hardly tell what's being sung, but then the distortion also helps the feeling of the recordings too, more often helping than not.
There are quite a few tracks around the midsection of the album that are kind of forgettable in terms of not being able to recall any lyrics or anything just from the name, but none of are particularly bad tracks, even some of the more forgettable ones like "queen of cans and jars" have some cool guitar parts or vocal melodies to listen to whilst the song progresses.
"Her psychology today" kind of feels like a bunch of small tracks mashed together, it has this cool moving hi hat section that comes in and out, and last quarter is totally psyched out, man.
"Kicker of elves" is as ridiculous as the name sounds, clocking in at a cool 64 and with the hook "Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee, kicker of elves (x4)" It's certainly one you can hum along too. As this song suggests, the last part of the album feels kind of unfocused and trails of without any real direction. The 48 second "demons are real" kind of speaks for itself, despite having a catchy hook.
Track 18, "I am a scientist" as a catchy bass melody and a catchy vocal part. It was one of the first GBV songs I heard outside the album and again, I thought it was just fine, but within the album it's certainly alot better.
The last two tracks, as I hinted, just kind of trail of, but are still pretty good. The 34 second "you are not an airplane" has a piano on it, which kind of ends the album just by virtue of having a piano, but with 6 lines of lyrics it could've been a bit fuller.
Overall, I feel like I'm going to need a good few more listens to properly get into the album, but I can easily see myself liking it quite alot once I'm more intimately familiar with all the songs.
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