11. Guided by VoicesAlien Lanes

Another band that my brother introduced me to but then my love for them transcended his original interest by a million miles. When I was 17 or 18, they were the only band I wanted to listen to. I could have picked various albums of theirs. Every song here is so great. You could drop the needle anywhere. Such brilliant pop songs, and like with Elvis Costello, I just spent hours and hours singing along to them. To me, Alien Lanes is pretty much perfect. People sometimes seem to be punished for being prolific and it’s not their fault, but they put out so much material… People say you can’t get into it all, or it can’t all be good. Yeah, I understand that, but you don’t need to listen to all of it. Not all of it has to be good. It’s such a shame that we’re stuck with this failed model: the music industry. People are criticised for putting out so much stuff and my response is: what else are we supposed to do?