Guided By Voices - TheBest of Jill Hives

Thu 26th Feb, 2004 in Music Reviews

Jill Hives is the best of Guided By Voices: awkward yet anthemic melodies, grassroots delivery, and a mighty bassline big as a lovesick heartbeat. As big as a valuable hunting knife, in fact. It’s the best track GBV have released since “Official Ironmen Rally Song”, and it’s in the same bittersweet vein, recalling the bizarre wistfulness of “Hunting Knife” and “Blimps Go 90”.

As always, Bob Pollard’s standard issue voice is flat out keeping up with his knack for uncanny melodies, just barely sticking the busy clusters and wavering high notes, but does get some help from a nice dose of delay. His lyrics are no less cryptic than usual, but they seem partly to tread familiar teen nostalgia territory: “finding out what makes her tick as they’re finding out what makes them sick”.

The B-sides are well worth a listen too, with “Free of this World” a psych-tinged protest song from Fading Captain collaborator Doug Gillard, and a free-wheeling cover of Cheap Trick’s “Downed” putting Pollard’s arena-rock heart on his sleeve. Another good argument for buying “Jill Hives,” which is just about equal to GBV’s best indy anthems of the last ten years, is the increasingly dependable unevenness of their over-frequent albums.