Robert Pollard's idea was to take a series of very short songs to make a LONG album... The pieces flow into one another usually at about a minute and a half... sort of like the classic Minutemen albums. But the sound is still very GBV, and amid the continuous song fly-bys are many of their classics: "Watch Me Jumpstart", "Striped White Jets", "As We Go Up We Go Down", "The Closer You Are". Of course, you also have some annoying bits, but they're over (some within 12 seconds!)soon enough.

So it can be said that Pollard DID successfully follow up Bee Thousand by creating an interesting event unlike any he had done before. If catchy, quick pop numbers is your cup of tea, precede to Alien Lanes immediately!

The epitome of GBV
If you don't love this album, i seriously wonder about you. It is like one, long, nonstop beauty of pop. The 28 little pieces of perfection add up to one wonderful 41 minutes and 15 seconds. Once you pop this in, you WILL NOT stop it until it's done. You start seeing Robert Pollard as a genius, and wondering how he became so prolific. How come he is able to just spout out a million perfect melodies, one after the other? If you don't think lo-fi stuff is you, then you will after hearing this. It's messy, yes, but each little mess or note he hits off key, or off beat, becomes an essential part of the album's overall feel. It wouldn't be the same without it. And by the way, the lyrics are simply unparalleled wackiness! Just take a look at the song titles. "Game of Pricks", "Closer you Are", "My Valuable Hunting Knife," and "Blimps Go 90" are some favorites, and as with most of their songs, they're short and sweet, so much so, that you're actually disappointed when they end! You just keep wanting more, but you definitely get it all here. This will always be in my top ten list, and is the best cd to start with if you've never heard GBV. I know every word, every note of this cd. But it wasn't my fault i learned them, i just listened, and listened....

Picture my Amazement
At work surrounded by the powers (burning fevers) that be while "Always Crush Me" (track 27) plays softly in the background allowing a single ear to HEAR THIS MAGIC. The moment is sublime.
If you're met Mr. Pollard and Co. and are sitting on the fence -- "Should I buy Alien Lanes or no?" -- on this side of caution err -- buy now.

avoiding challenges
why wait through a dull stanza to get to a hooky chorus? why take a brilliant intro and put it in front of a mundane song? gbv can be thought of as only serving up the good parts. the chorus stands alone; the intro stands alone. the bridge is a song unto itself and when that idea is done, the song is over and we're on to the next inspired idea. at least that's the way its supposed to work. me, i'm reminded of the film "adaptation" - yes, its clever to show your limitations and the smart way you've dealt with it. but i feel cheated out of the chance to see a really good film based on "the orchid theif." and i'm cheated out of hearing pollard's melodic ideas in a really good song.

Brilliant lyricists and rockers
This is a great, fun, poppy, and rocking album. It takes a few listens to really get into and get over the unpolished sound. It seems like ever other song on the album is a genius of catchy low-fi pop-rock, and the ones in between go by so fast you don't even notice them. My favorite song is "striped white jets" with its line, "what's expected of this super-breed". You can go a million different ways with what that actually means, but in the end you know it just rocks with reckless abandon. These guys were endorsed by the beastie boys and this is proof of their great lyrical ability. Buy this album.
Guided By Voices, the mascots of antihero rock and four-track hackery, chart another couple afternoons in their basement on Alien Lanes. It's the band's ninth album and second since being unearthed from the rich Ohio clay a year or two ago.

So now that lead voice Robert Pollard and buddies have quit their day jobs and late-bloomed into one of today's more successful indie rock institutions, what does the band's insistence on maintaining their signature muddy humming home recordings signify when they could obviously afford better studio-quality sound? Two possibilities. One: In order to continue delivering the stuff they have built a name on, Guided by Voices have descended from stardom to self-parody quicker than any band since the Doors. Or two: Do-it-yourself is not a romanticized economic necessity, but rather a conscious artistic choice--and hence reducible to merely this year's fad.

Either way, Alien Lanes finds Guided by Voices in the frustrating position of a new-aesthetic Moses: They can lead us to the low-fi Promised Land but can't enter with us. Or in other words, the band is like a mass-marketed "homemade" cookie: a well-intentioned contradiction that has nevertheless outgrown its usefulness.

But for everyone who still loves the music, there's a third possibility: Maybe the tape recorder is neither utility nor gimmick, but rather an irreplaceable piece of the band--even more so than any instrument or musician. That makes Alien Lanes simply a better-distributed chapter in the band's inimitable recast of classic psychedelic rock as sloppy postpunk; another collage with dozens of irresistibly cryptic song snippets shifting speeds and colors and not stopping (except for a disturbing homosexual slur half way through) until the last Beatlesque "all right" twenty-eight songs from go. --Roni Sarig