Using my new scoring method (read about it in my first Re-Score article), I thought it only made sense to get Half Smiles of the Decomposed out of the way. In my original review nearly 10 years ago the context for my review was how this was the last GBV album ever. We have since then had the original lineup come back for six new albums between 2012 to 2014, a solo-effort Pollard GBV album, and a reuniting with Doug Gillard for three GBV-labeled albums (Space Gun is still unreleased as of this). That is 10 new Guided By Voices albums since the first reunion in 2012, eight years after Half Smiles of the Decomposed! ...
Even if Half Smiles lost the title of last Guided By Voices album, it is still the last GBV album that sounds like it was polished in a studio, since the newer albums still encompass the mish-mash audio fidelity of pre-Do the Collapse GBV.
In my previous post on this album, 11 of the album's 14 songs made the playlist. There are a lot of good songs on Half Smiles, and I easily wrestled with the placement of a few (Should Girls of Wild Strawberries be higher? Is A Second Spurt of Growth rated too high? Are Gonna Never Have to Die and Huffman Prairie Flying Field truly among the best of Pollard's output?). As always this ranking is how I would rank things today, and my opinion will change over time. So here is the new ranking:
Among Bob's Best
04 Gonna Never Have to Die
14 Huffman Prairie Flying Field
Gems
01 Everyone Thinks I'm a Raincloud (When I'm Not Looking)
06 Closets of Henry
Almost Gems
12 A Second Spurt Of Growth
They're Good
02 Sleep Over Jack
03 Girls of Wild Strawberries
05 Window Of My World
07 Tour Guide At The Winston Churchill Memorial
08 Asia Minor
11 Asphyxiated Circle
They're OK
09 Sons of Apollo
Could Live Without
10 Sing For Your Meat
13 (S)mothering And Coaching
Toss-Offs & Throwaways
-- none
1 comment:
Thank you for sharinng this
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