Guided by Voices’ classic 1995 album Alien Lanes is getting a 25th anniversary reissue this year, courtesy of Matador Records’ new Revisionist History series. It’s being pressed on blue, green, and red vinyl and limited pre-orders come with a GBV keyring/bottle opener modeled on an original 1995 design. The reissue is out August 21.
Matador has also shared the rare Banks Tarver–directed Guided by Voices documentary Watch Me Jumpstart from 1996. Watch it below; plus, read a new statement from Robert Pollard about Alien Lanes.
Future installments of Matador’s Revisionist History series that are due this year include pressings of Pavement’s Wowee Zowee, Yo La Tengo’s Electr-O-Pura, Chavez’s Gone Glimmering, Bailter Space’s Wammo, and Mary Timony’s Mountains.
Read Pitchfork’s Sunday Review of Alien Lanes.
Robert Pollard on Alien Lanes:
We were fearless at the time we recorded Alien Lanes. That’s why it
bristles with insane energy and confidence. We were still riding the
high accolades of Bee Thousand and probably should have succumbed to
the critical pressure of a worthy follow-up. Instead we had, in our
megalomaniacal view, mastered the instant gratification machine known
as the 4-track and began recording song after song with titles like
“Cuddling Bozo’s Octopus,” “My Valuable Hunting Knife,” “Pimple Zoo”
and “After the Quake (Let’s Bake a Cake).”The door had been opened for us to throw out as many weird ass ideas
as we were capable of and we did. We even thought we were starting to
look cooler and decided cool enough to have the entire back cover be a
photograph of us in the basement looking pseudo intellectually laid
back and stoned with long hair, stars and stripe gym shoes and a box
of Tide in the background.Our friend Kim thought the album was too bombastic. Too frenetic and
difficult to digest. I agreed. We were proud to be putting out our
first album on Matador and cock strutted accordingly. It cost us $10
to make. It’s worth a million. I personally think it’s better than
B-1000 (but not by much). There are two different camps of GBV fans to
argue and debate.God bless 1995 and open hearted record labels like Matador (and Scat
before them) for allowing bands like us, with the preferred limited
resources, to remove the constraints and pre-conceived notions of the
more industry-minded constituents who would have much preferred we
destroy the cassette master of Alien Lanes in the better interest of
sound manufacturing and what’s more agriculturally consumable. It’s
better to leave the farm than to continue plodding through the cow
shit.