Guided By Voices Alien Lanes (25th Anniversary) LP (Blue, Green & Red Multicolored Vinyl)

Available widely on colored vinyl for the first time, Guided By Voices' Alien Lanes celebrates its 25th anniversary with the release of a new multicolored LP. The reprint of GBV's 1995 classic is the first in Matador's Revisionist History 2020 series, limited to an edition of 2,500. Inspired by the multicolored drumhead featured on the album's artwork, this new edition is pressed on blue, green and red multicolored vinyl making it the first non-exclusive color vinyl edition of this release.

Originally released on April 4, 1995, Alien Lanes served as the first Guided by Voices album to be released on Matador Records. With 28 tracks spanning the course of 41 minutes, the album would fundamentally alter the concept of what a rock and roll record could be. Bursting at the seams with classic rock bravado ("Game of Pricks", "Closer You Are"), anthemic power pop ("My Valuable Hunting Knife", "Motor Away"), punk ("Pimple Zoo", "My Son Cool"), psychedelic experimentalism ("Ex-Supermodel", "Alright"), and tape-warped ballads ( "King And Caroline", "Blimps Go 90", "Chicken Blows") Alien Lanes dips and dives between genres and moods with breakneck efficiency and a remarkable amount of intellect and emotion bolstered by the abstract poetry of songwriter and front-man Bob Pollard.

"God bless 1995 and open hearted record labels like Matador (and Scat before them) for allowing bands like us, with the preferred limited resources, to remove the constraints and pre-conceived notions of the more industry-minded constituents who would have much preferred we destroy the cassette master of Alien Lanes in the better interest of sound manufacturing and what's more agriculturally consumable. It's better to leave the farm than to continue plodding through the cow shit." - Robert Pollard 2020

You begin to take it for granted after a while, but 28 songs in 41 minutes is insane. Some of them are fragments of songs, sure, but they're wondrous fragments. Some of them are absurd, like 'Ex-Supermodel,' a power ballad slathered in snores, and some of them end when they feel like they're just getting started, like 'Gold Hick.' But most of the songs are just short - fully formed, yet in and out with their deranged genius and on to the next one before you can stop to think. The closer you are, the quicker it hits you.