So, I looked up the setlist (which they are rather faithful for sticking to), and present it here with albums of origin in parentheses:
1. Glad Girls [
Isolation Drills]
2. Cut-Out Witch [
Under The Bushes, Under The Stars]
3. Dead Liquor Store [
Warp And Woof]
4. Motor Away [
Alien Lanes]
5. Best Of Jill Hives [
Earthquake Glue]
6. You Own The Night [
Zeppelin Over China]
7. I Am A Tree [
Mag Earwhig]
8. Chasing Heather Crazy [
Isolation Drills]
9. Blue Jay House [
Warp And Woof]
10. She Wants To Know [
Forever Since Breakfast]
11. Rally Boys [
Zeppelin Over China]
12. My Kind Of Soldier [
Earthquake Glue]
13. My Future In Barcelona [
Zeppelin Over China]
14. Game Of Pricks [
Alien Lanes]
15. Jane Of The Waking Universe [
Mag Earwhig]
16. Tractor Rape Chain [
Bee Thousand]
17. Yours To Keep [
Bee Thousand]
18. Echoes Myron [
Bee Thousand]
19. The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory [
Bee Thousand]
20. I Am A Scientist [
Bee Thousand]
21. Your Name Is Wild [
Under The Bushes, Under The Stars]\
THE NOT-AS-SAFE-AS-ONE-WOULD-THINK ALBUM RECOMMENDATION: If you can remember particularly liking any of these songs, start with that album. Just be prepared, in some cases, for inconsistency.
THE ABSOLUTE-NO-ONE-WOULD-ACTUALLY-ARGUE-WITH-THIS RECOMMENDATION: Start with
Bee Thousand.
There is a very fair chance that any google search looking for their "best" album would have this as #1 as well. This came out during an era where 4-track/low-fi was as much a style as an aesthetic and for that reason alone many consider it a classic.
HOWEVER, the more important point is that the songs are terrific. This album was recorded during a period of rejuvenation for Robert Pollard and the rest of the band, so there was a ton of songwriting documented. If I remember correctly, there were approximately 65 songs recorded for this album, and the final track listing was the SIXTH version of the album; further to note is that not ONE single song appeared in all six track-listings, which truly documents the album as a work-in-progress. You really are getting the best of the best with this one.
For people who are new to GBV/RP, this album is a tiny bit confounding because of what many of us back-in-the-day referred to as "snippet" songs, most of which were sparsely decorated/instrumented and in most cases didn't even reach one minute in length. I personally bought the follow-up album
Alien Lanes first back in '95 when it was coming out and those "snippet" songs almost deterred me from ever buying another album of theirs... I'm glad I powered through.
This album is a blue-print for what they were doing at the time: rapidly recording as much as possible, sometimes within a half-hour of a song being written, but this is the album where everything clicked in ways that didn't always with
Vampire On Titus (its predecessor) and
Alien Lanes (its follow-up).
This is one of five albums of theirs I come back to again and again and it always feels like home.
IF YOU LIKE THIS, NEXT CHECK OUT:
Alien Lanes, Under The Bushes Under The Stars, and
Warp & Woof.
THE MY-PERSONAL-PICK-TO-START-WITH RECOMMENDATION:
Under The Bushes, Under The Stars.
Recorded after
Alien Lanes (sometimes in a garage, sometimes in an 8-track studio) and released in 1996. This album is what made me LOVE the band.
On previous albums, the shorter songs felt exactly the right amount of length... on
UTBUTS, the songs had (slightly) more length and it is almost criminal how much information can be packed inside of these two minute gems. There's not a single song that ends and I think either "there was too much of that" or "I really wish there was more of this." [Particularly of the first 18 songs, which is considered the "proper" album; the last six are bonus tracks.]
For those of us who have been listening and going to shows for a while, it also is home to the song "Don't Stop Now." Originally recorded as an acoustic demo years before, it was reborn in all its full-band glory. The idea of the album originally was that it would be a story about the history of the band, with "Don't Stop Now" being the epic closer, as it references previous works and paints a picture of the band emerging victorious from previous struggles/problems. It's probably no surprise that, since the "Electrifying Conclusion" concert in 2004 (where this song closed the final show), it has appeared on most of their setlists, usually as one of the last songs of the night.
...............unfortunately, the experience was marred for me the last time I saw them perform and Pollard was so drunk he fell into the drumset and basically had to be propped up against the bass drum for most of the rest of the performance. But, then again, I knew that was a possibility going in, sooooooo... there's that?
IF YOU LIKE THIS, NEXT CHECK OUT:
Mag Earwhig, Isolation Drills, Half-Smiles Of The Decomposed, and
Class Clown Spots A UFO.
MY FAVORITE ALBUM OF THEIRS THAT IS A DARK HORSE PICK EVEN AMONG OTHER FANS:
Earthquake Glue.
This was originally a 12-song LP, but Pollard wrote three new songs ("My Kind Of Solder," "The Best Of Jill Hives," and "Of Mites And Men") basically as the album was being finished, and they were quickly recorded and sporadically placed through the album. I have listened to the album as a 12-song album and the full 15 song release, and it absolutely works both ways.
The three extra songs were absolutely the most power-pop single-ready songs of the entire album.
The remainder of it is very much an album's album. If you like Cheap Trick, The Cars, and Genesis, or like the thought of rolling them all together, you're going to swear by this one. Very much arena rock, more prog-type influences here than almost anything else they released.
I am still looking for anyone else to agree with me on this, but I will defend this album to the death.
IF YOU LIKE THIS, NEXT CHECK OUT:
Half-Smiles Of The Decomposed,
Space Gun, and
Mag Earwhig.
There's a lot more to be said about era-specific GBV/RP, but you didn't ask about that
