By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Half Smiles of the Decomposed For all its rocking moments, Half Smiles Of The Decomposed is not without its soft spots. “A Second Spurt Of Growth” adds a gentle touch of finger-plucked acoustic guitars to break up the album’s second side, beautifully accompanied by the signature “noises & atmospheres” sounds […]
Tag: Guided By Voices
A Trophy Mule In Particular
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Earthquake Glue Part of the mission of the GBV Guitar website is to fill in the gaps. For Robert Pollard’s work 2004 and prior, there are already some guitar tabs floating around on the internet, and a lot of them are pretty accurate, or at least close enough to […]
Gonna Never Have To Die
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Half Smiles of the Decomposed When trying to learn how to play Robert Pollard’s songs on guitar, I’ve had the most success when I have access to either live footage of the band playing (actually seeing them live is better, of course) or a stripped-down recording of the song, such […]
Asphyxiated Circle
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Half Smiles of the Decomposed According to the invaluable resource of all things Robert Pollard, GBVDB – Guided By Voices Database, “Asphyxiated Circle” from 2004’s Half Smiles Of The Decomposed was only ever played lived by the band a total of 13 times. This, in my opinion, is not […]
Tenth Century
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: How Do You Spell Heaven “Tenth Century” from How Do You Spell Heaven is one of those great “cool-down” numbers that Robert Pollard likes to throw onto his albums, just to take a break from the near-constant rocking. Although it stays pretty light for the most part, with acoustic guitars […]
We Liken The Sun
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: August By Cake “We Liken The Sun” from August By Cake is a track that I didn’t give enough attention when the album first came out. I guess that’s somewhat acceptable, as there were plenty of new songs vying for attention all at once. I’ve really come to appreciate this […]
I Am A Scientist
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Bee Thousand It pretty much goes without saying that every song on Bee Thousand is a classic, but “I Am A Scientist” surely must hold a special place for being a classic classic. Since its release in 1994, there probably hasn’t been a single Guided By Voices show that didn’t include […]
Sport Component National
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun Just as Robert Pollard uses a collage as the artwork on many of his album covers, so also does he write some of his songs in the same fashion. In “Sport Component National” from Space Gun, he combines snippets of seemingly unrelated melodies and music into a cohesive […]
Flight Advantage
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun “Flight Advantage” from Space Gun comes charging like a wild stallion right out of the gate, and the energy doesn’t relent until its frantic race is finished. The song uses an open string drone, with the open D note on the fourth string ringing throughout each chord. You […]
Liar’s Box
By: Guided By Voices Appears on: Space Gun “Liar’s Box” from Space Gun is one of those great Robert Pollard tunes that defies all standard song structure. It has one or two parts that repeat during the song, but other than that, it’s a series of distinct parts that sum up to a satisfying whole. As […]
