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More Lies From The Gooseberry Bush

Teenage Guitar

Released: 09/01/2014
Format: 2 CD
Label: Fire Records
Catalog #: FIRECD386
Country: United Kingdom
Discs: 2
# Tracks: 33
Images
Front Cover
Pressing Details
Vinyl Color # Pressed
N/A ?  
Comments
Fire Records Original Release Notes: Robert Pollard isn't a man to rest on his musical laurels. The acclaimed Guided By Voices frontman doesn't just create solo records (released under the not so surprising name Robert Pollard), he goes further into the fold of solo, writing and playing and recording everything you hear under the name Teenage Guitar. The second such recording to fall into the solo works of Bob arrives in the form of 'More Lies from the Gooseberry Bush'. A fifteen track whirlwind of fuzz pop mastery. Fire's exclusive 2CD release also includes the complete debut album, 'Force Fields At Home' complete with accompanying booklet to bring you right up to date with the latest from Robert Pollard. (Please note this last sentence may itself be long out of date by the time you read this).

Original Release Notes: Robert Pollard, head lunatic of the Guided By Voices' asylum, has a surfeit of original thoughts. (Most people are lucky to have even one, ever.) That this even needs to be expressed is evidence enough for its "truth," as only obvious or obviously untrue things can ever hope to be true. Or to approach the truth. Something Pollard does with uncanny regularity, and which is further on display on every track on the gloriously unkempt, roiling-with-ideas More Lies from the Gooseberry Bush, the second record Pollard has released under the nom-de-rock Teenage Guitar. Here's a song title: "Matthew's Ticker and Shaft a. Come to Breakfast b. The Girls Arrive c. Division of Swans d. When Death Has a Nice Ring." It starts with distorted guitar over a primitive snare-and-bass-drum beat (all instruments on all songs played by Pollard), shifts into an out-of-tune piano clumping along a simple seven-chord progression, lurches into a wall of distorted guitar as two tracks of Pollard wail, wide-panned in each speaker, before finally resolving in a pretty harpsichord figure (or some synthesized version thereof) inelegantly tripping over itself before trailing off into the next track: "The Instant American," which presents multi-tracked Pollard vocals chanting over a background of what sounds like a bunch of people at a party drinking. These are not the two strangest tracks on the fourteen-song album, which clocks in at just over thirty minutes. If there are times when Pollard's musical ambition seems to overwhelm his ability to present his ideas coherently, that's a feature, not a bug. The spastic, machine-generated beat of "A Guaranteed Ratio," the ham-handed church organ of "Good Mary's House," the off-key crooning, the awkwardly plucked possible-banjo on "All You Fought For," the general (but not always) sloppiness, the rumbling toms and slashing power chording of "New Light": it all adds up to a sense of urgency and an awful lot of unconstrained joy suffusing every single track on More Lies From The Gooseberry Bush. For those who like their Pollard stately, tuneful and elegiac�sure, he can do that without effort, but that's not what Teenage Guitar is about. Teenage Guitar is about trying hard without seeming to try hard. The result is that rare thing: a completely original album. Which is also a true delight, a sky-blue gem, a timeless and untimely cabinet of wonder. And by some few miles the greatest musical artifact your ears will have the pleasure of encountering this year.

Original Rockathon Album Notes: You loved the first Teenage Guitar album. So for the second installment Uncle Bob bumped things up and recorded at Cyberteknics Studio. The result is huge lo-fi. The Gringo of Lo-Fi, if you will.

Album cover has some similarities to Selling England By The Pound by Genesis (probably intentional as it is one of Bob's all-time favorites).

The song "Matthew's Ticker And Shaft" is broken up into 4 parts with the following subtitles:
A. Come to Breakfast
B. The Girls Arrive
C. Division of Swans
D. When Death Has a Nice Ring.
More Lies From The Gooseberry Bush
1.   Go Around (The Apartment Dwellers) 2:37
2.   Spliced At Acme Fair 2:15
3.   A Guaranteed Ratio 2:15
4.   Good Mary's House 1:34
5.   Skin Ride 2:28
6.   Full Glass Gone 1:29
7.   All You Fought For 1:48
8.   Gear OP 1:18
9.   No Escape 2:22
10.  Matthew's Ticker And Shaft 3:26
     A. Come to Breakfast
     B. The Girls Arrive
     C. Division of Swans
     D. When Death Has a Nice Ring
11.  The Instant American 2:11
12.  Normalized 2:26
13.  New Light 2:25
14.  Birthplace Of The Electric Starter 1:26
15.  A Year That Could Have Been Worse 2:09
Total Length: 32:09
Force Fields At Home
1.   Court Of Lions 1:56
2.   Come See The Supermoon 3:46
3.   Current Pressings, Colors And Styles 0:56
4.   Still Downstairs 2:03
5.   8 Bars Of Meaningless Mathilda 0:33
6.   Harvest Whale 2:02
7.   Strangers For A Better Society 1:05
8.   It Takes A Great Promise 2:44
9.   It Doesn't Mean I'm Underground 1:04
10.  Baby Apple 1:46
11.  Peter Pan Can 1:26
12.  Alice And Eddie (Fabulous Child Actors) 2:06
13.  Alfred Never 1:56
14.  Gymnasium Politics 2:06
15.  Atlantic Cod 1:43
16.  Suburban Cycle Saccharine 2:40
17.  Post Card To Pinky 2:23
18.  Let Me 1:14
Total Length: 33:29
Other Formats
Label - Catalog [Format] (Country) # Tracks
Guided By Voices Inc. - GBVI-51 [CD] (U.S.A.) 15
Guided By Voices Inc. - GBVI-51 [LP] (U.S.A.) 15

Album Credits
Artwork/Design
Role Name
Collages Robert Pollard
Front Cover Collage "Mask"
Layout Joe Patterson
Layout Robert Pollard
Musician
Role Name
Acoustic Guitar Robert Pollard
Bass Guitar Robert Pollard
Devices Robert Pollard
Drum Machine Robert Pollard
Drums Robert Pollard
Effects Robert Pollard
Electric Guitar Robert Pollard
Field Samples Robert Pollard
Hammond Organ Robert Pollard
Handmade Butterfly Slide Guitar Robert Pollard
Harpsichord Robert Pollard
Mandolin Robert Pollard
Mutant Congas Robert Pollard
Nylon String Guitar (Conventional & De-Tuned) Robert Pollard
Piano Robert Pollard
Samples Robert Pollard
Vocals Robert Pollard
Production
Role Name
Engineer Phil Mehaffey
Executive Producer Phil Mehaffey
Mastering Engineer Phil Mahaffey
Producer Robert Pollard
Studio
Role Name
Recording Location Cyberteknics - Dayton, OH
Publishing
Role Name
Copyright 2014
Publisher Needmore Songs
Songwriter Robert Pollard
Management/Business
Role Name
Business Management Eric Weiss
Legal Richard Grabel
Management David Newgarden
Other
Role Name
Additional Album Text A Factory Of Raw Essentials Product
Additional Album Text Teenage Guitar Is Younger Than You Think
Additional Album Text www.robertpollard.net
Additional Album Text www.rockathonrecords.com
Invaluable Assistance Joe Patterson
Invaluable Assistance Steve Hopkins
Rockathon Records Kevin Poindexter
Rockathon Records Matt Davis
Rockathon Records Mike Lipps