Let it be stated, for the record, that, as of this writing, I don't consider myself one of Robert Pollard's wide-eyed worshippers. The Guided By Voices frontman - and songwriter, guitarist, and overall creative force - seems to either inspire complete devotion or utter indifference, depending on how cynical of an indie-rock fan is doing the judging. Personally, I don't think of myself as either - I consider myself an admirer of his work, a marginal indie-rock fan who enjoys Bee Thousand and Do the Collapse enough to buy a Guided By Voices retrospective, but who won't jump at the chance to shell out sixty bucks for a comprehensive box set.

I also don't think that Robert Pollard is the greatest songwriter since Lennon and McCartney. However - I am enough of an admirer that I'd like to pimp this guy's gift for writing memorable, easily palatable, accessible melodies when he's not concentrating on thirty-second lo-fi dirges. Guided By Voices's initial gimmick was that Bob Pollard wrote big-rock guitar anthems, and then got tanked with a bunch of buddies and laid them down on a four-track. And they were all two minutes long, three minutes tops. Somewhere along the line, Guided By Voices got produced, and were decried by purists as corp-rock whores, and have been lamented in hundreds of reviews as "too slick." Whiners.

Human Amusements at Hourly Rates: The Best of Guided By Voices crams 32 tracks onto a single disc - approximately 0.111% of Robert Pollard's total songwriting repertoire. Which, in and of itself, could really fuel the skepticism of many a GBV fan - not only do GBV routinely put out albums of, oh, 25 songs or so, they routinely put out albums, period, racking up in fairly short order a discography longer than Jay-Z's. The chances that Pollard, in choosing a tracklist, would "get it right" were pretty slim.

Fortunately, Pollard seems to have "gotten it right"; he's compiled a batch of songs that flow pretty well as an album - as a GBV album, anyhow - and that sound remarkable even when plucked from their original album's context. (Besides - fans have the extra consolation that, should the Guided By Voices machine keep chugging for another decade or so, Pollard will have the other six thousand songs in his repertoire, as well as the six thousand songs he will have written and recorded between now and then, to put together another satisfying retrospective.) It's ludicrous, anyway, to expect all of your Guided By Voices favorites to make it on one album.

Sequenced in non-chronological order, Human Amusements at Hourly Rates is a consistently vital and varied listening experience. Opening with dischordant teaser "A Salty Salute," we're immediately whisked through a whirlwind of rock tunage highlighting the best songs (and half-songs) of Pollard's illustrious career. Unsurprisingly, Human Amusements hits its stride in its midsection - the first third or so is just building momentum - and for a run of ten songs or so, you'll become convinced that Guided By Voices are your new favorite band. You'll be transported back to the first time you heard Slanted and Enchanted with "The Best of Jill Hives," you'll watch the little hairs on the back of your neck rise when Pollard sings "until I get it I can't breathe" in "Surgical Focus," and, most of all, you'll allow the melody of "Tractor Rape Chain," which cuts through the fuzz and muddiness of its production like the proverbial, revelatory knife, to take you places mere "indie-rock" would never dare to go.

It's not that Human Amusements at Hourly Rates doesn't boast it's fair share of space-wasters - for example, there's a perfectly good 23 seconds devoted to the head-scratching "Hit" that doesn't seem like it should be there, and "To Remake the Young Flyer" is a particularly unpleasant slice of sludge that wanks about for far too long, even at a scant 1:44 - it's just that, simply, the good outweighs the bad, an age-old rationalization used to defend positive album reviews, but one that's applicable here nonetheless. "Teenage FBI," a variation of which appears on Do the Collapse, is one of GBV's shorter songs that _doesn't_ feel unfinished, or like an abominable waste of time. "Back to the Lake," from 2002's Universal Truths and Cycles, is simply one of GBV's best songs in years, reaching a particular euphoria when the opening piano line trickles in behind the finest chorus. And then, lest you forget that Guided By Voices are, at heart, a big-rock band, "Glad Girls" is a breath of invigoratingly fresh air, shattering the scuzz of its immediate musical surroundings with a humongous chorus certainly robbed from some obscure Who record and a glorious, indie-banishing studio veneer that most "indie" bands would loathe to compromise their lo-fi pride for. It's from Isolation Drills, one of GBV's most widely-flogged records (second only to Do the Collapse, most likely) - which just goes a long way towards discrediting jaded fans of production and clarity who believe mistakenly that to embrace a crisp studio sheen is to somehow compromise artistic integrity. I cry bull, but that's another complaint for another day.

Considering all the reams of paper and all the miles of four-track tape that certainly went into composing much of Bob Pollard's discography, a universally pleasing Guided By Voices retrospective doesn't look to be in the cards. That said, if one of the principal purposes of a best-of collection is to entice potential new fans, does Human Amusements at Hourly Rates do the trick? I venture a resounding yes. By no means is it perfect, but then there aren't any perfect Guided By Voices records either. Robert Pollard's frustrating songwriting muse shows up in both good and bad doses here - and, fortunately, the good has the one-up on the bad by a heartening ratio. The best of Robert Pollard's Guided By Voices tunes are riffs and melodies and the finest examples of each - the worst are half-chewed ideas that Pollard compulsively committed to wax without thinking to let them stew a little more. It's fortunate, then, that Human Amusements at Hourly Rates wisely opts to include more of the former.






Recommended: Yes