Best Record of 2001: Day 44
Cover art courtesy of TVT records
Good morning!
Today we’re taking a look at Guided by Voices 2001 LP Isolation Drills.
The glad girls only wanna get you high.
I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard GBV. There was no revelation, no epiphany the way there might’ve been with other bands. It just seems like they’ve always sorta been there, and if i’m honest, that’s kinda how I like it.
In one of my year-end issues, I joked that if we go more than six months without a GBV release, something must be horribly wrong.
I was only half kidding.
The band’s prolific output- or Robert Pollard’s- is no secret. An entire media empire could be built by simply dissecting each record in order.
Indeed, if you want a podcast that goes through most of the band’s catalog—it ended in 2020, so it’s missing, like, 13-14 records— you can start here.
The GBV discography is lengthy, but there’s no shortage of twists and turns along the way. That’s good for variety- and if you are planning a GBV media empire, it will mean no lack of flamethrower takes about each song/release.
In 2001, the phrase hot take didn’t exist yet, but music opinion(s) sure did. And views regarding Isolation Drills were generally positive. If anything, it’s a consistent record.
That’s not meant as a backhanded compliment. GBV can be varied, but sometimes squishing every style onto one record is regressive. With this release, we had a solid long player that did well to keep Pollard from bouncing around too much like a sonic superball.
Helping rein that in was this record’s lineup-specifically ex-Breeders drummer Jim MacPherson. The rhythm section often finds a way to get lost on these records, but this time is different.
To be clear, this is still a guitar-driven poppy record, the treble is set to 11, and the vocals are tailor-made to sing along with in the car. Or in a park…and a bunch of did just that in Milwakuee’s Humboldt Park a couple of summers ago.
Photo by author
When was their breakthrough? What’s their best record? These are the sorts of shibboleths record nerds live for. There’s not nearly enough bandwidth on the world wide web to tackle this, but I’d say by ’01 they were already very much on their way and Isolation Drills is one of their best
For my money, Glad Girls is damn near the poppiest track Pollard ever came up with, but you could make a plausible argument for Fair Touching, Chasing Heather Crazy, and Brides Have Hit Glass. And that’s just this record
The glad girls are alright. And that’s my hot take.
Bottom Line: This is up against They Might Be Giants’ Mink Car. TMBG have their own set of rabid fans, and Chase Roper has an entire newsletter dedicated to their work. If you’re at all interested and/or curious about their sounds, Kiss Me, Son of Blog should be your next stop.
Any thoughts on either of these records? Agree/disagree with my take? Sound off in the comments!
Kevin Sent 
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