I Can See It In Your Eyes

You either embrace lo-fi recording or you choose to ignore a large chunk of Guided by Voices' catalog. I long ago made my peace with the hiss, and find it works on the songs where it appears. I understand the need to record as cheaply and easily as possible, and laud the fact that Robert Pollard and Co. tried to create epics, limitations be damned. Followers who recorded lo-fi for the sake of being lo-fi don't get it, and the results are predictably poor.

Over the years, plenty of GBV fans wished for re-recordings of old tracks in hi-fi. Pollard complied a handful of times, most notably on the Tigerbomb EP, which included hi-fi versions of a couple of Alien Lanes tracks. I enjoyed those, but I'm OK with Pollard keeping the past where it is and moving forward.

Save for "I Can See It In Your Eyes." This track, a discard from the aborted Learning to Hunt LP, is a stunner almost completely undermined by its lack of fidelity. It's a hook-filled rocker with a great verse, soaring chorus and chiming power chords. It could be better lyrically -- one of Pollard's surprisingly bountiful "you done me wrong" love songs --but it's naivety is part of its poppy charm:

I can see it in your eyes
Time for you to desert me now
But I don't want you to go

It would have fit perfectly on Pollard's recent solo albums, particularly Coast to Coast Carpet of Love or Normal Happiness, and it's the kind of thing Todd Tobias could crank out in an afternoon. So, Bob, if you're looking for a great song to round out your next pop album, take a look in the vaults and give this one another go.

Supermarket the Moon

Though it's a good song, it is fitting for "Supermarket the Moon" to land on the Suitcase boxed set. The song is an outtake from Bee Thousand, and while it fits with the tone of those songs, I can't think of anything I'd replace. Yes, I've called Bee Thousand flawed and stand behind it, but those flaws are part of what make it the album it is. Pulling something sub par off and sticking this on wouldn't necessarily improve things. At this point, the disc is so ingrained in my mind it's difficult to imagine it being anything else.

Not that Robert Pollard didn't labor of things. As documented by the three-LP reissue on Scat, the album went through a number of different configurations. At one point, "Supermarket the Moon" was slated to lead off side two of what was being called Instructions to the Rusty Time Machine, followed by a number of tracks that also eventually were dropped.

No matter where or how it surfaced, it's a worthy addition to Pollard's catalog. The song is a quiet ballad built on Pollard's strummed acoustic guitar and Tobin Sprout's piano. It's simple and pretty, something that sounds like a children's lullaby, though more nonsensical, of course:

Tonight the doubt will leave your eyes
And then you'll finally realize
That all along you knew
The dark skies are still blue
And when you turn the monitor on
You will understand why it's gone
It's always gone too soon
We'll supermarket the moon
And feed you with a spoon
So you won't leave too soon

Tear It Out

Hearing an artist's juvenilia can be an interesting and surprising experience. Robert Pollard is to be commended for letting his fans hear a boatload of it. In this case, it's a solo demo from 1988, the year between the release of Guided by Voices' first and second LPs. Anyone familiar with those albums and everything that came after knows that Pollard's lyrics grew more sophisticated, obtuse and circumspect as he progressed as a songwriter. That said, hearing straightforward songs like "Tear It Out" is still startling.

The song, found on the first disc of the Suitcase boxed set, featured Pollard accompanying himself on electric guitar. It's a song of heartbreak with little obfuscation involved. The singer has been hurt by a lover and is issuing a challenge: fish or cut bait.

You must have had a lot of time to eat your cake
Don't you think you can have it now?

It's the kind of song one expects from a hard rock frontman going solo for the first time. Freed from the constraints of the band's hard sound and lyrics penned by the domineering guitarist, he bears his soul with a tender ballad that makes the girls swoon and the guys gag.

That said, few would write lines like Pollard:

You must have had a million guys to show you pain
Don't you think you could shake their hands
I challenge you to figure out the truth
A picture and a spoiling wasted youth

In the end, Pollard's heartbreak kid resigns himself to the facts, telling his estranged lover, "You can't be strong," he sings, "But you're always right." Turning those words back on their creator, I'd say he was neither strong nor right in this case, but we'll forgive him, offering credit for the abundance of those traits in what followed, and thank him for letting us hear him at his most pedestrian and fallible so that we might know the difference.