Review Summary: The greatest best-of compilation ever? Maybe
Guided By Voices are just one of those groups that can be rightfully called one of the best
and one of the worst bands of all time. It’s easy to see how Robert Pollard and his Voices fit in so well with the other beautiful–uglies, just by a quick glance at their varied and extensive discography. Take a classic like their b-side-originated
Bee Thousand, and you have an album that fits alongside the best work that any non-genre-specific music artist has to offer, past or present. Conversely, take something like 1999’s
Do The Collapse, and you have one of the worst albums ever: When Voices hit it in their career together, they nailed it with 100% accuracy; when Voices missed it,
well, they fell flat on their faces.
As you might gather, Voices had a hit-and-miss career, where the output of the mid-90s was arguably their strongest, with falling-outs coming before and after that specific time period. Though, this is not to say that these other albums – primarily those that are not called
Bee Thousand,
Alien Lanes, and
Under The Bushes Under The Stars – didn’t have some of song-breeder Robert Pollard’s best indie rock nuggets; it’s just to say that these releases, and there are
a lot of them, had some of the band’s worst material popping up on their tracklisting, far too often. An unfortunate career maybe for the Voices, but it is indeed one that lends itself to being very compatible for the harvesting of the band’s best material for a best-of compilation: Cue to 2003’s
Human Amusements at Hourly Rates.
Now, this compilation could have been released in one of two ways: (1) Where Voices’ sprawling but compact
Bee Thousand and
Alien Lanes albums would have essentially been combined and shuffled together or, as it is here on
Hourly Rates, (2) a sampling of their greatest indie rock material could have been taken from their whole discography and placed together in such a way that it would feel like a
classic Voices album. Either way, you would run into the problem where you would inevitably be missing out on
something awesome from Voices’ catalogue of great songs – there’s just too many of them, and while the second option is certainly an overall superb collection that flows through its thirty-three play count seamlessly, you have to come to terms with the fact that a Voices best-of compilation really needs to be about eighty songs in length to do the band any sort of justice.
But that’s the only complaint one could fathom for
Hourly Rates. Seriously. This
is one hell of a best-of compilation. To touch on an earlier point, “Things I Will Keep” is arguably one of the best cuts here, which is saying a lot, but it is also taken from the terrible
Do The Collapse album, one in which Pollard was at his most polar, songwriting-wise. Likewise, the bass-led “The Best of Hill Jives” is a standout with the quick delivery of its classic Pollard melody, but it also comes from another Voices album that often remains forgotten, 2003’s
Earthquake Glue. You’ll find as you listen to
Hourly Rates, and especially if you are already a fan of the band’s more well-known albums, that you will begin to form an intense appreciation and gratitude for this release that you wouldn’t necessarily feel for most best-of compilations: It makes you want to re-visit, or check out for the first time, those lesser albums for more hidden gems.
An early cut taken from Voices’ more lo-fi beginnings, “14 Cheerleader Coldfront” bathes in naked production and campfire acoustic, sing-along vibes that wholly represent what makes Voices so appealing, even at their barest: It’s all
simple indie rock, often making no sense lyrically, but remaining profound and damn catchy all the same. That opening strum of acoustic guitar chords in “Tractor Rape Chain”, or the way Pollard drags the words of his melody in “Surgical Focus”, are the instances that will be planted in your mind on your first time through this, and it’s these same moments that will hit you like a lo-fi-indie brick as the repeated listens continue to come: They call this
subtle music, but really, when you consider many-a-night with albums like
Bee Thousand and
Alien Lanes playing in an endless cycle, it’s anything but that. These guys have you from the beginning, as they plant their seeds and then later reap their crops;
Hourly Rates is another prime example of how they do this so well, even if it’s merely a best-of compilation
So, yeah, of course you’re missing out on a lot if
Hourly Rates is the
only thing by Voices that you check out – this isn’t a band like
The Goo Goo Dolls or
Snow Patrol where a best-of compilation is really all that anyone needs of their discography to get by. But in its favor, however,
Hourly Rates acts as that jump-start for you to dive into more of Voices’ discography, that
incentive, whether you’re a fan of their classic albums or haven’t even heard of them. Allow the collection a couple of listens either way, though, because Pollard and his boys need a planting period in order to put the hooks of their quirky indie rock songs into your head. On that second or third listen through - Voices
will have you. Trust me: it happened to me; it happened to those hipsters; and it will happen to you. There’s really no better place to start than this, other than their classic albums, which, to be honest, for a release like this is rather surprising.
Hourly Rates is that rare best-of compilation that is absolutely essential for the fans to check out.
