Guided By Voices - "Navigating Flood Regions"

Once they achieved sudden underground fame after years of obscurity, Guided By Voices immediately reissued all of their pre-fame LPs (five!) as one comprehensive box, cleverly entitled Box. Thought the quality is spotty throughout, these remain a must for Pollard devotees.

When I was going through one of my obsessed-with-GBV phases sometime in the mid-90s, G— (my roommate at the time) picked up a couple of stray CDs from the Box, the first and third full-lengths. Such was the depth of my obsession that I was hooked on even these lesser efforts for a couple of weeks.

This cut is from the third, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia. I was originally planning on posting "An Earful O' Wax" (a title which would later be recycled for an odd German-only compilation of tracks from the Box), which I recalled as a favourite for its incongruously blistering guitar solo. However, upon listening to it again I realised it was just a shitty song with a terrific coda. Instead I present this one. Like most Voices cuts from the pre-fame era, it's hardly a classic, but the infectiousness of the rhythm can't be denied.

I picked up the Box later that same year using the unspoken friend-of-employee discount at the legendary Mondo Kim's; thanks, G—.

Buy it... on vinyl.

From my deck to you: Guided By Voices - "Navigating Flood Regions"