Our Pollard, who art in Dayton, hallowed be thy name... man, look at that rating. The eighth deadly sin must surely be the curse of objectivity. By now, having been lucky enough to spill my guts all over this site on such diverse topics as the ghosts of GBVs past, present, and future, the myth of Robert Pollard, and a religious experience at a long-gone concert when it seemed like the band might just be the answer to any question rock 'n' roll wanted to ask, it may seem that my objectivity is in short supply. It is. The part of me that holds an irrational, almost baseless devotion to Robert Pollard's hissed-out anthems is screaming "10!" from the back of my brain, and it only takes a listen to the restless ghosts of "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory", or the rejuvenated arena dinosaurs of "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows" to weaken my resolve. But something's wrong, and every time that voice speaks up and asserts this album's perfection, it's shouted down by a simple, immutable truth: "If it's right, you can tell."
Guided By Voices got it right back in 1994. Bee Thousand is the band's definitive moment, the point when the ringing Who-isms of Pollard's youth-- filtered through four-tracks and his own post-punk, X-Men, stream-of-consciousness quirks-- finally matured beyond the atonal growing pains of Vampire on Titus and Propeller. The distinction was slight but unmistakable-- like learning to harness all the jaw-dropping, stadium-quaking power of Propeller's triumphant exclamation ("I'm much greater than you think!") without all the run-up or refining the unworked defiance of "Exit Flagger". On Bee Thousand, GBV mastered all those fragments of greatness and assembled an entire album from them. Sure, it stumbles occasionally, and falters as only four spare-time, blue-collar bandmates from Dayton, Ohio can-- that is, humanly and forgivably-- but the original Bee Thousand simply stands alongside the greatest of the modern era. The original warrants a 10.
So what of The Director's Cut? Shouldn't this just be a bionic Bee Thousand? In what parody of a just universe is this not every ounce of the original plus whatever else was left over? I feel faint...
Track sequence, it turns out, is really, really important. This new, expanded version of the record includes an early, 33-track sequence. It's spread out over four vinyl sides, along with another record containing the standard B1000 tracks that weren't initially included, as well as The Grand Hour and I Am a Scientist EPs. Unfortunately, this original sequence is so bafflingly unsatisfying that it might've kept Guided by Voices in the basement for another decade had clearer heads not eventually prevailed.
"I Am a Scientist" first earned GBV a measure of notoriety and in some small way helped legitimize the rise of lo-fi to minor prominence in the early 90s; sadly, it wouldn't even have been included on Bee Thousand (here, it's relegated to the extras and outtakes disc). And that's least of the original's tracklist problems: The "new" material in the early sequence is composed almost entirely of Suitcase and King Shit and the Golden Boys tracks-- material that was substandard even on those collections of outtakes.
The burden is only slightly ameliorated by an older, thinner version of the otherwise classically bombastic concert staple "Postal Blowfish" (better reprised on the Brain Candy soundtrack), a four-track demo of "It's Like Soul Man", and a few lazy, acoustic charmers like "Indian Was a Angel" or "Supermarket the Moon". But for every new highlight, there's an equally inaccessible "Deathtrot and Warlock Riding a Rooster" or "Zoning the Planet"; the resultant load proves to be a little too heavy for even classics like "Echoes Myron" to completely bear.
With the remains of the final cut haphazardly tacked on at the end, in addition to a thoroughly mixed bag like The Grand Hour, and almost-redundant alternates of both "Shocker in Gloomtown" (included twice in the span of four tracks, and yet still valuable for the energy infusion it provides both times) and "I Am a Scientist", the "bonus record" is as slapdash as The Director's Cut itself. Thankfully, a fantastic unreleased version of "My Valuable Hunting Knife" ends this ordeal on perhaps its highest note, dispensing with the haunting atmospherics found on the Alien Lanes version and plunging into a sea of churning guitar and a clipped, punchy vocal performance from Pollard.
Of course, a phenomenal finish isn't quite enough to correct the confusing missteps of the previous hour. Despite containing the core of one of the most stunning, unexpectedly triumphant records ever recorded, and a few wonderful tracks besides, Bee Thousand: The Director's Cut manages the almost impossible feat of reducing itself to a merely good album with some incredible highlights-- maddeningly similar to almost every other album our beloved Fading Captain has ever tossed off. The slipshod nature of this expanded reissue serves only to prove two things: for better or worse, GBV is ever Robert Pollard's child (and thankfully Tobin Sprout was around to shepherd it, at least for a time), and that the final edit of Bee Thousand is every bit the miracle it sounds.
