Things I Will Keep

While I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I secretly (and somewhat shamefully) like the fact that Guided by Voices remained my secret gang of lovable losers despite the band's attempt at making the big time, I'll temper that by saying I was rooting for the band at the same time. If anyone deserves critical and commercial acclaim, it is certainly Robert Pollard. I would have been content to revel in the glory of my 7" singles, knowing the fair weather fans were only hearing the band at its most polished and palatable.

Alas, any worry about losing my favorite band to the mainstream was allayed when the masses rejected the great singles on Do the Collapse, none perhaps more perfect for radio than "Things I Will Keep." The song is a bounty of hooks, it has a chorus that can be molded to be seen as uplifting, it's short and never lags and it is as compressed and shiny as any hit of the past decade. All that and it's actually a really, really good song. While "Teenage FBI" was too good to be a novelty hit, "Hold on Hope" a bit too maudlin to pass as a power ballad and "Surgical Focus" too, um, surgically focused, "Things I Will Keep" seemed like the band's best shot at a bona fide hit. When it didn't even make a dent in the public consciousness, I knew GBV was mine to keep forever.