RE:SCORE - Guided By Voices: Alien Lanes (1995)

TOTAL SCORE: 98, AVG: 3.50

It is crazy to think that when I originally reviewed Alien Lanes the album was only about 10 years old. Now, it is almost 25 years old! I called My Valuable Hunting Knife my favorite GBV song of all-time, didn't really dig My Son Cool, and mentioned that Vampire on Titus has a claim to being GBV's best album. I can say that none of those statements are true anymore (to me anyway), but I completely agree with my original assessment that Alien Lanes is an amazing album and extremely essential when discussing Guided By Voices...

From a scoring perspective Alien Lanes has the highest total score at this point, and an average score below Bee Thousand, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, and Propeller (4.24, 4.17, and 3.60 respectively). To me, this totally makes sense, because in a way Alien Lanes is the most quintessential Guided By Voices album, in that it represents the nature of band the best. GBV albums mix gems with the rubble, and it has its fair share of both. For every Game of Pricks, there is a Chicken Blows, and then a bunch of generally good stuff in the middle. 

From a hits perspective, the inclusion of Game of Pricks, Motor Away, My Valuable Hunting Knife, A Salty Salute, and Watch Me Jumpstart alone takes Alien Lanes to the top when considering essential albums. Is Boston Spaceships' The Planets Are Blasted a better album than Alien Lanes because it scored a rocking 4.00? Not necessarily, since Alien Lanes has 14 "Almost Gem" or higher tracks compared to Planets' 9. Also, the "bad" songs on Alien Lanes do add something to the albums' overall tone and appeal if they don't on their own as strongly. I would say that The Planets Are Blasted is more consistently good though, and so are the other GBV albums mentioned earlier that were given a higher average score.

But at the end of day, Alien Lanes has to be in the conversation for the greatest GBV album of all time.

Here is the updated ranking:

Among Bob's Best
01 A Salty Salute

03 Watch Me Jumpstart

07 Game of Pricks

15 Motor Away

17 My Valuable Hunting Knife

Gems

05 As We Go Up, We Go Down

13 Closer You Are

20 Striped White Jets

22 Blimps Go 90

Almost Gems

09 A Good Flying Bird

11 Pimple Zoo

19 King and Caroline

25 Little Whirl

26 My Son Cool

They're Good

02 Evil Speakers

04 They're Not Witches

14 Auditorium

23 Strawdogs

28 Alright

They're OK

06 (I Wanna Be A) Dumbcharger

08 The Ugly Vision

12 Big Chief Chinese Restaurant

13 Hit

Could Live Without

10 Cigarette Tricks

18 Gold Hick

21 Ex-Supermodel

24 Chicken Blows

27 Always Crush Me

Toss-Offs & Throwaways
-- none

Given the scoring above, the album would get 98 points total (and an average of 3.50).