Track Listing
1. Wished I Was a Giant
2. #2 in the Model Home Series
3. Expecting Brainchild
4. Superior Sector Janitor X
5. Donkey School
6. Dusted
7. Marchers in Orange
8. Sot
9. World of Fun
10. Jar of Cardinals
11. Unstable Journey
12. E-5
13. Cool Off Kid Kilowatt
14. Gleemer (The Deeds of Fertile Jim)
15. Wondering Boy Poet
16. What About It?
17. Perhaps Now the Vultures
18. Non-Absorbing
19. Over The Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox
20. Weed King
21. Particular Damaged
22. Quality of Armor
23. Metal Mothers
24. Lethargy
25. Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy
26. Red Gas Circle
27. Exit Flagger
28. 14 Cheerleader Coldfront
29. Back to Saturn X Radio Report
30. Ergo Space Pig
31. Circus World
32. Some Drilling Implied
33. On the Tundra
| Details | | Playing Time: | 67 min. | | Distributor: | Revolver USA Distribution | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
The second half of the VAMPIRE ON TITUS CD consists of all of PROPELLER, which was originally released on vinyl only in 1992 on Rockathon Records.
VAMPIRE ON TITUS personnel: Robert Pollard (vocals, guitar, drums); Tobin Sprout (guitar, bass, vocals); Jim Pollard (guitar).
PROPELLER personnel: Robert Pollard, Jim Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Don Thrasher, Mitch Mitchell, Dan Toohey.
VAMPIRE ON TITUS is Guided By Voices' first CD, following five albums and a 12-inch EP, all released on vinyl. Which is not to say these avatars of homemade, low-fidelity pop-rock have gone "digital"--TITUS was recorded on 4- and 8-track tape recorders, and sounds like it was mastered on an old boombox. Or as GBV's resident singer-songwriter-genius Robert Pollard puts it in the minute-long acoustic-guitar ditty "Wondering Boy Poet": "The cup is only being filled/For the chance to have it spilled." As if to prove the point, "Wondering Boy" is intermittently invaded by tape noise.
But at least half the songs on TITUS have pop hooks that would make anyone in the Hollies, the Raspberries or Big Star jealous. It's a self-consciously weird album, with Pollard making bizarre percussion noises, guitars distorting beyond hope, harmonies not quite matching, lyrics alluding puzzlingly to marchers in orange and nests of crows, and songs seeming to end just as they've begun. It's also a brilliant one, sounding something like a radio transmission from a distant planet where rock has been stripped of all its bombast and boiled down only to its melodic possibilities. As a bonus, the CD also includes all of PROPELLER, the last of GBV's vinyl-only albums, which features a fuller band, slightly fuller production and some of GBV's finest-ever classic-rock-manque songs. "Quality Of Armor," "Exit Flagger," "Lethargy" and a few others here have remained at the core of GBV's live repertoire, and deservedly so.
Editorial Reviews
...lays out the full weird sprawl of the Guided By Voices experience...
New York Times (11/11/1993)
6 (out of 10) - ...[Guided By Voices] succeed in sustaining a mood (lazy, suburban) that is not always consistent but is often genuinely surprising...
NME (11/19/1994)
...Guided By Voices are probably the last, great, undiscovered American underground band of the age....Each time you listen, you hear something new, left flummoxed that pop can still be invested with such poignancy...
Melody Maker (10/30/1993)
...a low-fi tour de force, featuring songs and fragments of such casual brilliance (R.E.M. and Pavement are the easiest stylistic reference points) that you know the majors will soon come sniffing.... - Rating: A+
Entertainment Weekly (12/24/1993)
...one of indie rock's best kept secrets....Like the superb Smog, GBV create a kind of never-neverland rock/pop out of beautiful, enigmatic fragments....Hearing their wondrous tuneage through a dense fog of amp static makes them sound so much more poignant than if they were produced with state-of-the-art equipment...
Alternative Press (11/01/1993)
| See an error? Submit a change request |
All rights reserved.
